November 12, 2009 – 12:23 pm
Croakey is old enough to remember the days when anyone who raised questions about the potential for mammographic screening for breast cancer to have a downside was treated with all the derision and scorn usually reserved for dangerous heretics.
Thankfully, the debate has matured quite a bit since those days. We are now hearing a somewhat [...]
October 16, 2009 – 12:01 pm
As we speak, bloggers are gathering in Las Vegas for the Blog World New Media Expo, billed as “the world’s largest blogging and new media conference”. There are several sessions on health and new media.
I came across this event while doing some research recently on new media and health, which also led me to some [...]
October 14, 2009 – 3:38 pm
If I was Health Minister (heaven forbid as I wouldn’t have the stamina, political nous, or tolerance for playing the media game), I would insist that the following question was applied to every piece of policy advice or recommendation.
Will this further increase the inequities in access to good health and to health services? Or will [...]
September 22, 2009 – 10:00 am
If you’ve had chemotherapy for an early stage cancer, and are experiencing problems with your memory or concentration, you may be interested in a new study for which volunteers are being sought.
Dr Janette Vardy, a medical oncologist at Sydney Cancer Centre and the University of Sydney, has sent in this report:
“We are conducting a [...]
September 17, 2009 – 2:11 pm
Drew Dawson, one of the gurus of sleep research, has written a long and informative piece for Crikey today about the issue of long working hours, fatigue and health service safety.
Dawson contributed to the fatigue risk management guidelines which recently caused Queensland Health some media grief, and today he’s taken us well beyond those [...]
August 7, 2009 – 12:04 pm
Ray Moynihan wrote this Crikey piece about two new trials, published in the latest New England Journal of Medicine, that raise serious questions about the ongoing use of a controversial procedure called vertebroplasty, where bone cement is injected into a person’s vertebrae to try and fix painful spinal fractures.
Writing from Washington, health policy analyst Dr [...]
Professor Ian Olver, the head honcho at the Cancer Council Australia, wrote this Crikey piece about why gene patent law requires urgent attention, based on his appearance today before a Senate committee inquiring into such matters.
Sally Crossing, the chair of Cancer Voices NSW, also appeared at the Senate committee hearing this morning, and here [...]
After keeping us waiting for some time, the NHMRC has finally delivered a swag of reviews and reports for public comment, including the much-anticipated Nutbeam Review of Public Health Research Funding (which has been the subject of some interest previously at Crikey and Croakey).
The NHMRC is seeking comment on its strategic plan, and has also [...]
Last week, Crikey published this story about the delayed release of a major review of public health research, which was completed last October, and promised for release early this year but still under wraps.
(Ironically enough, one of the review’s recommendations was the establishment of a national public health research register to improve transparency around research [...]
Simon Chapman, professor of public health at the University of Sydney, has provided a robust critique of Jennifer Doggett’s recent critique of increased tobacco taxes:
Erstwhile Croakey correspondent Jennifer Doggett has written a piece for ABC-Online challenging the wisdom of increasing tobacco tax, arguing that it would be regressive and harm the poor (it will “mean [...]
