652 Results

  • Artificially sweetened beverages: What does the latest evidence tell us on health benefits versus harm?

    … Reducing consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) is an important current … there are multiple concerns about potential health risks of ASBs – although limited evidence and hard data. This blog … An artificial sweetener replicates the sensory properties of sugar (ie, it tastes like sugar). However, because …
    Briefing

  • A Smokefree Aotearoa – could making tobacco products available only through community pharmacies help us get there?

    … In this blog we discuss the arguments for and against one of the proposals included in the Smokefree 2025 Action Plan Discussion Document that the sale of smoked tobacco products could be restricted solely to community pharmacies after the number of retail outlets selling these products are greatly reduced, …
    Briefing

  • Calling for action on suicide prevention in Aotearoa

    … Summary The Ministry of Health is inviting submissions on the second Draft Suicide … to prevent suicide are broad and far-reaching.  A whole-of-society approach is urgently needed to address long-standing high rates of suicide in NZ. This approach requires a policy re-set …
    Briefing

  • Low-cost heart-healthy bread for NZ

    …   Figure 1: The loaf of the left is the optimised HHB$1.5 loaf. The loaf in the … on a study we just published on optimising the design of bread for heart health. Using linear programming we found … bread voucher system for those at high risk of cardiovascular disease. Why study bread as a health issue? …
    Briefing

  • Avoidable hospitalisations: Helping our health system get through COVID-19

    … – we must also plan for other scenarios where thousands of New Zealanders are sick – including many urgently … 1 Better resilience for our health system in the face of COVID-19 must include reducing current avoidable pressures … Emergency policies should include the reduction of preventable injuries that currently take a toll on …
    Briefing

  • Would reducing the number of tobacco retail outlets achieve the Smokefree 2025 goal?

    …   Figure 1. Map of current tobacco retailers in New Zealand (n=6000) How can we achieve the 2025 goal of a smokefree nation? The best approach to this tobacco … is some evidence that ready access to tobacco retailers influences both smoking initiation and limits successful …
    Briefing

  • The case for lowering salt levels in processed foods is now even stronger – new research

    … and high sodium intake were associated with higher risk of death. But new research suggests that low sodium intakes are not associated with a higher risk of death and the results for low sodium intake in these other studies may be largely due to inaccurate measurement of sodium intake. So the scientific community can now more …
    Briefing

  • We need rapid progress on digital solutions to help eliminate COVID-19 from New Zealand

    …   In this blog we discuss some of the emerging technologies New Zealand could adopt to … elimination strategy. We argue for the prioritisation of technologies to assist with contact tracing, border … contributions to the pandemic response. The scale of the COVID-19 pandemic has quickly overwhelmed existing …
    Briefing

  • A fat week – debates about saturated fat that will not go away

    … methods to improve the quality and causal inference of our research – more of that below.  During the week, the Australian Broadcasting … supposedly debunking the science on the association of saturated fat with cardiovascular disease. One of the …
    Briefing

  • Severe domestic squalor in Aotearoa New Zealand: A preliminary survey

    … Summary A preliminary survey of local Age Concerns and district and city councils … squalor? In every community there is a small subset of people who live in homes so unclean, messy, and unhygienic … is blissfully unconcerned by the situation”. 2  This level of environmental uncleanliness has been defined as ‘severe …
    Briefing

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Public Health Expert Briefing (ISSN 2816-1203)