Author Archives: Croakey

What does recession mean for health? And other questions

Continuing the theme of the previous post, Research Australia has also been looking into the impact of an economic crunch on the community’s health.
Their investigations raise concerns for the wellbeing of many vulnerable groups – especially in rural Australia – but also show there are many unanswered questions about the relationship between recession and health.
Dr [...]

Starving America?

What does economic crisis mean for a country’s health? Hunger and hardship for the population’s most vulnerable, judging by the news coming out of the US.
Croakey’s North American correspondent, Dr Lesley Russell, writes:
“While an excellent discussion is underway on Croakey about the value of calorie labeling in tackling obesity, it has been shocking this week [...]

More breast, less hypocrisy please

Australia does a pretty woeful job of making sure babies get the best start to life – mother’s milk. A new national strategy aims to boost the uptake of breast feeding recommendations so that far more babies are still being breast fed at six months.
But Ron Batagol, a pharmacy and drug information consultant, says this [...]

Let’s have some balance in breast cancer screening discussions

Reaction to the recent study suggesting breast cancer screening leads to significant over-diagnosis and unnecessary treatment has been, as you might expect, quite mixed.
Some of the most critical comments have come from breast cancer consumer advocates – overtones, perhaps, of how prostate cancer consumer groups have sometimes reacted to evidence about the potential harms of [...]

Would calorie-counting menus help bust Oz girths?

As previously reported in Croakey below, there is a weight-busting move afoot in the US to introduce calorie-counting menus in chain restaurants. These have been in place in New York City since last year but may be more widely introduced.
Would such a move be useful and welcomed in Australia? Read on…

Some hard truths about health care

Health reform is in the wind but perhaps it won’t really make the difference that is being sought unless it acknowledges and addresses some hard truths about health care.
That is the suggestion of this very interesting piece below from Patrick Bolton, who has long and diverse experience in the industry.  He has worked as a [...]

Asbestos – the town that needs to leave its past behind

In the late 1800s, when the people of eastern Quebec realised the money that could be made from what was known locally as “cotton rock”, they decided to name their settlement after it. They never could have guessed what it might one day mean to come from a town called Asbestos.
All these years later, Canada [...]

Breast cancer screening gets an indepth examination

The study investigating over-diagnosis in breast cancer screening, as previously described at Croakey, is attracting widespread interest and discussion.
Andrew Penman, Chief Executive Officer of Cancer Council NSW, has been considering the complexities of the issues involved, and writes:

Reads of the week

I know, I know – we’re all too busy, no time to read etc – but here are a few articles from recent times that are worth the effort, if you haven’t spotted them already. They cover everything from the health impacts of inequality to mental health, alcohol policy, and the ties that bind pharma [...]

How many calories would you like with that order?

The health care reform bill in the US is so weighty that many people haven’t yet twigged that it contains a significant provision for those concerned about a healthy food supply and obesity. The provision would require anyone who operates chain restaurants or vending machines with more than 20 locations to provide a calorie count [...]