Category Archives: child health

Starving America?

November 19, 2009 – 12:13 pm

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 [...]

By Croakey | Also posted in Food, Health inequalities, global health, poverty, public health | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

More breast, less hypocrisy please

November 19, 2009 – 11:47 am

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 [...]

By Croakey | Also posted in childbirth and maternity services, public health | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Selling our children to McDonald’s

October 2, 2009 – 6:27 pm

According to the Daily Telegraph, McDonald’s has “pulled off one of the marketing coups of the year” by signing up more than 230,000 NSW students to its maths tutoring program.
The paper says that 46 per cent of the state’s secondary students have registered for the Maths Online tutoring program. Nationally, more than a third of [...]

By Croakey | Also posted in health & medical marketing, obesity, public health | Tagged , , , | Comments (2)

Why the secrecy about data, when it could help everything from influenza to child protection

August 7, 2009 – 1:27 pm

The Department of Health and Ageing has called for submissions on proposals for developing healthcare identifiers and related privacy legislation. A Croakey reader, Dr Trevor Kerr is worried that the submissions are not going to be made publicly available.
Below he gives two pertinent case studies of the potential benefits that could flow from healthcare identifiers [...]

By Croakey | Also posted in e-health, influenza | Tagged , , , , | Comments (3)

Amidst fears about pregnancy and swine flu, don’t miss the bigger picture

July 23, 2009 – 1:51 pm

Fears about the impact of swine flu upon pregnant women are generating alarm and some confusion. And not only in Australia. In Britain, various health and medical sources have been giving the public conflicting advice, according to this report in the British Medical Journal.
Meanwhile, Professor Peter McIntyre, Director, National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance [...]

By Croakey | Also posted in Indigenous health, childbirth and maternity services, influenza, swine flu | Tagged , , , , | Comments (1)

New obesity report is a recipe for fatness

June 9, 2009 – 8:24 am

Last week, I had my say in Crikey about the House of Reps Standing Committee on Health and Ageing’s report on obesity. I was concerned that it focused so much on treatment and didn’t put a stronger emphasis on prevention. 
Professor Boyd Swinburn, professor of population health at Deakin University and Director of the WHO [...]

By Croakey | Also posted in Food, obesity, prevention, weight loss products | Tagged , , , | Comments (2)

Indigenous doctors join chorus of alarm over NT mandatory reporting laws

May 29, 2009 – 12:43 pm

In this recent Crikey article, I reported that many health and medical experts are alarmed about the likely impact of  new requirements for NT health professionals to report all under-age teenage patients they suspect of being sexually active. This AAP article suggests the chorus of concern may be having some impact.
The Australian Indigenous Doctors Association [...]

By Croakey | Also posted in Indigenous health, NT Intervention | Tagged , , , | Comments (1)