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 [...]
October 7, 2009 – 8:24 am
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 [...]
October 6, 2009 – 11:22 am
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 [...]
October 5, 2009 – 5:08 pm
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 [...]
October 2, 2009 – 10:47 am
Are we on the verge of real health reform?
We’re not even close – and if you’re expecting anything meaningful to happen before 2020, you’re just not paying close enough attention.
That’s the assessment of Professor Ian Hickie, executive director of the Brain and Mind Research Institute at the University of Sydney.
And he thinks the Federal [...]
August 26, 2009 – 10:54 am
Some time ago, an editor with long experience in the medical publishing industry and I were dreaming about creating a new type of health publication that wouldn’t take the narrow focus of so many of the existing professional publications.
It’s not surprising, of course, that magazines like Australian Doctor, Medical Observer or the latter’s new Practice [...]
August 19, 2009 – 10:52 am
The PM made a big deal about the need to ensure treatments are evaluated and backed by good evidence in this widely-reported speech at St Vincent’s Institute for Medical Research in Melbourne last Friday.
He said: “ Patients need treatments, technologies, and procedures for which there is evidence from research that these are safe and effective. [...]
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 [...]
In an unusual collaboration, journalists, academics and politicians in England have joined forces in an offensive against bent stats.
Straight Statistics, according to its website, aims to:
Draw attention to the inaccurate reporting of statistics in the media, and encourage better standards by training and example.
Ensure that Governments follow the Code of Practice on the use of [...]
More than 700 doctors from around the world have called for the Israeli president of the World Medical Association to step down, calling him “unfit for office” and claiming that he has turned a blind eye to the “institutionalised involvement of doctors” in torture in Israel, according to a news report in the latest British [...]
