Alcohol industry calling the shots on Australian health policy
Michael Thorn writes: Shocking scandals continue to roll through the media cycle, featuring abuse of power and influence by the addictive industries, and alleging corruption and worse. Who h... Read more
Private insurance: the health policy conundrum of our time
Private health insurance has been the subject of much debate for decades now. Policies to support it have increased in complexity and cost, all without clear evidence that support is effecti... Read more
Bold campaign against NSW abortion laws
The NSW Government is set to debate a bill that will have it become the last state to decriminalise abortion. A new campaign has begun – #Arrest Us. In the early 1970s eighty women dec... Read more
Introduction by Croakey: The essay below – Why did you get into this work? – from leading public health academic and researcher Simon Chapman makes for timely reading. It comes ahead of this... Read more
Who owns who in the Australian food market?
It may seem as though we have an endless choice of brands when we are shopping at the local supermarket. But delve a little deeper and our choices are in reality much more constrained. Work... Read more
Tobacco excise and sugar taxes: heavy-handed, regressive and nothing more than lazy revenue grabs
While the public health community in Australia responded positively to the UK’s announcement of a ‘sugar tax’, not all commentators on health policy support the introduction of a similar tax... Read more
Whose problem is it anyway? Transforming the public health narrative to stem the tide of “lifestyle drift”.
Why is it that, while we know it’s the big issues, such as social disadvantage, lack of education and powerlessness, that have the most effect on health, we often focus on the smaller... Read more
The Health Wrap: The Vegemite news spread; On your bike (sans helmet); a chronic problem; funding medical research and teens’ troubling mental health.
This week’s Health Wrap is compiled by my colleague Megan Howe, the Sax Institute’s Publications Manager. Enjoy the Wrap and tw... Read more
The New York Times prompted much public health concern this week with a report in its Well section that Coca-Cola “is backing a new ‘science-based’ solution to the obesity... Read more
Abbott Government’s first year in office: what’s the verdict on health?
This Sunday marks the first anniversary of the election of the Abbott Government. We’ll leave it up to Croakey readers to characterise the year in health – feel free to post (publishable) co... Read more