September 2, 2009 – 6:30 pm
Don’t get too excited about the Preventative Health Taskforce recommendations, cautions Professor Boyd Swinburn, Professor of Population Health at Deakin University, and Director of the WHO Collaborating Center for Obesity Prevention. There have been other reports making similar useful recommendations which have gone nowhere.
He writes:
“The decision by the Preventative Health Taskforce to start with the [...]
By Croakey
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Also posted in Food, chronic diseases, health reform, prevention, public health, tobacco control
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Tagged alcohol, Boyd Swinburn, food industry, obesity, Preventative Health Taskforce, public health, self-regulation, tobacco
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August 24, 2009 – 1:47 pm
DrinkWise, an organisation established by the alcohol industry to promote a “safer drinking culture”, is in the news today over its release of a new education program about teenage drinking.
But probably not for the reasons it would like.
Professor Simon Chapman (a regular Crikey/Croakey contributor) is in the Sydney Morning Herald, calling it: ”classic fox-in-charge-of [...]
August 21, 2009 – 3:00 pm
The recent post by VicHealth CEO, Todd Harper, about community support for alcohol labelling has clearly generated some considerable thought by health policy analyst Jennifer Doggett, who recently responded with this post.
She’s now come back to the discussion with some more points to make. She writes:
“We would be outraged if the airline industry determined aircraft [...]
August 13, 2009 – 4:57 pm
The Public Health Association of Australia is celebrating the passing of the alcopops tax legislation in the Senate today as “a significant victory for prevention and public health in Australia”.
Meanwhile, health policy analyst Jennifer Doggett has been humming some old tunes, and contemplating Todd Harper’s recent Croakey post calling for health warnings on alcohol labels. [...]
August 11, 2009 – 10:24 am
The alcohol industry – and all those who sail with it – are awaiting the release of the Preventative Health Taskforce report which has now been with Minister Roxon for some weeks. The Taskforce’s brief was “to provide evidence-based advice to governments and health providers on preventative health programs and strategies, focusing on the burden [...]
The Opposition spokesman on health, Peter Dutton, was recently quoted in the SMH and other Fairfax publications arguing that increasing tobacco taxes is just a money grab and has “nothing to do with health outcomes”.
It’s time Mr Dutton, his staff, colleagues – and anyone else who happens to be poorly informed on this issue – [...]
Is the DrinkWise organisation as independent as it claims?
Mike Daube, Professor of Health Policy and Director, Public Health Advocacy Institute of WA, Curtin University of Technology, has had a critical look at the evidence, and writes:
A group of academics recently published a letter in the Medical Journal of Australia calling on researchers not to [...]
Melissa Sweet, health journalist and Croakey moderator, writes:
I suffered an adverse reaction at the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP) conference in Adelaide this week. It happened when one speaker casually referred to “heart sink patients”.
It’s not as if I hadn’t heard the term before. Anyone who regularly reads the medical mags [...]
In the lead-up to the budget, Croakey has asked an assortment of public health and health policy types about their wishes and expectations.
Michael Moore, CEO, Public Health Association of Australia
In the initial budget for this government was a huge effort on hospital waiting lists and $$$ through to the States for improvements at the tertiary [...]
By Croakey
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Also posted in Health inequalities, Hospitals, Indigenous health, chronic diseases, health ethics, health reform, mental health, prevention, primary health care, private health insurance, public health, quality and safety of health care, tobacco control
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Tagged alcohol, federal budget, health budget, pathology, preventive health, private health insurance, radiology, tobacco
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March 12, 2009 – 10:27 am
Dr Alex Wodak from St. Vincent’s Hospital Sydney writes:
Apart from the alcohol beverage industry, most people in Australia need little convincing that our favourite drug causes us a lot of trouble. Each year alcohol causes thousands of deaths, fills many hospital beds, results in many alcohol-fuelled violent rampages and cost our economy many billions of [...]