22 Results

It’s taken nearly four years, reviews of about 55,000 research publications, and endless meetings, consultations and negotiations. (Plenty of blood, sweat and tears, in other words.) Today the NHMRC finally launched the new Australian Dietary Guidelines and Infant Feeding Guidelines (available here with masses of supporting material). The aim of this post (thrown together in [...]

Health and medical research has been at the forefront of many peoples’ minds of late – and not only because of the recent NHMRC grants announcements. Universities Australia and others have been sounding the alarm (see here and here) about the possibility of a funding freeze affecting many research grants. This has been widely foreshadowed [...]

Professor Simon Chapman writes: In 2011, the National Health and Medical Research Council published a “rapid review” of the evidence of whether wind farms are harmful to health. The NHMRC concluded that  “There are no direct pathological effects from wind farms” and that “low level frequency noise or infrasound emitted by wind turbines is minimal [...]

Is there a disconnect between the general focus of health and medical research and population health perspectives? Most people with a concern for population health would surely nominate health inequalities as a critical issue (defined by the WHO as “ differences in health status or in the distribution of health determinants between different population groups”). [...]

As you may have heard, drafts of the revised Australian Dietary Guidelines and the Australian Guide to Healthy Eating are now available for public comment, with a view to their finalised release next year. Clearly, translating more than 55,000 scientific journal articles into clear, simple messages and advice is no small task. In a nutshell, [...]

Update 1 Dec: A response from the NHMRC has been added to the bottom of the post. Note: If you want to comment on the NHMRC’s draft guidelines for identifying and managing conflicts of interest in clinical guideline development (and, as the post below suggests, they do need help) – the deadline is COB this [...]

As reported in a recent Croakey post, an NHMRC committee is in the process of drafting new dietary guidelines. This is inevitably an incredibly fraught and contested process. There are so many powerful players with an interest in encouraging us to eat more of whatever it is they sell. Often these marketing campaigns are dressed [...]

Last week The Australian newspaper splashed with this story about a “green diet push” which accused the National Health and Medical Research Council, which is currently developing new national dietary guidelines,  “of subverting food science to fit a green agenda”. The paper followed up with a particularly ill-informed editorial under the headline “Social engineers want [...]

The 11 June issue of Australian Doctor carries a story (p5)  that is truely gob-smacking. Apparently the NHMRC has been trying to organise a meeting between the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the Australian College of Midwives to develop an agreement on referral guidelines, in relation to midwives being [...]