Category Archives: Health inequalities

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 [...]

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 [...]

Hospital management is too important to leave to medicos

A call for hospital management to return to arrangements of the past has drawn fire from former senior health service manager Michael Moodie and health economist Professor Gavin Mooney.
They write:
“John Graham’s suggestion for saving NSW hospitals, as outlined in his recent Centre for Independent Studies monologue, dreams of hospitals managing their own affairs unfettered by [...]

Where does the PM stand on health equity?

OK, so the recent post on why Health Ministers should insist on health equity impact statements for all policy recommendations may have revealed me as a hopelessly tragic idealist. And that’s not all. On reflection, I was also being a bit simplistic.
Of course, if we really care about health equity, health ministers would probably not [...]

The question that Health Ministers should be asking

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 [...]

Where do the homeless figure in health reform?

We’ve heard a lot of debate about what proposed health reforms might mean for people with chronic diseases or people on hospital waiting lists.
But we haven’t heard much at all about what the reforms might mean for one extremely needy group who are often not well served by existing health services or funding structures.
Professor Ian [...]

A message for the Feds on bowel cancer screening…

Further to the recent Croakey posts on a new study evaluating the initial impact of bowel cancer screening, one of the study’s authors has sent in her take on the results.
Dr Sumitra Ananda, a cancer specialist in Melbourne, is hoping the Federal Government acts on the new findings.
She writes:

“The recent report in the MJA [...]

Why bowel cancer screening should target poorer patients

As previously mentioned at Croakey, the latest Medical Journal of Australia has published a study examining the impact of the national bowel cancer screening program. It suggests that the program may be more likely to benefit the better off.

Professor Mark Harris, from the UNSW Centre for Primary Health Care and Equity,  says there is enough [...]

The good and the worrying news about bowel cancer screening

Do cancer screening programs increase the health gap between the well-to-do and the not-so-well-off?
That is one worrying implication from a study just published in the Medical Journal of Australia.
Researchers sought to examine the initial impact of the national bowel cancer screening program which offers faecal occult blood testing to those aged 55 or 65.
They reviewed [...]