MNCLHD

MNCLHD

Monday, February 28, 2011

Substance use among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people

The purpose of this report from the AIHW is to provide an overview of the prevalence of substance use among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, as well as the use of services for substance abuse. The report focuses on three main categories of substance that have major health implications for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people: tobacco smoking, alcohol use and illicit substance use.

Some of the data includes the fact that tobacco smoking in these groups has declined slightly over time, although it is still high. Indigenous Australians were twice as likely as non-Indigenous Australians to binge drink (17% and 8% respectively), but the proportion of Indigenous (15%) and non-Indigenous people (14%) who drank at long-term (chronic), risky or high-risk levels was similar.

Directory of Services for Older People

The Department of Health and Ageing has just released its 2011 Directory of Services for Older People. Freely available to everyone in pdf format, the guide is divided into six chapters:
  1. Quick information guide’ - a summary of services and contact information.
  2. ‘Health choices’ - a range of health matters including preventive care, early detection and getting medical care.
  3. Accessing care’ - information about how to get help to stay at home and how to access aged care, including residential services and advice for carers.
  4. Employment choices’ - where to go to get help finding work and options on education and training.
  5. Finance choices’ - pensions, allowances, taxation, superannuation and where to go for financial advice.
  6. Protecting your rights’ - legislation and where to go for legal advice and help.

Alcohol Studies Database

The Alcohol Studies Database contains over 80,000 citations for journal articles, books, book chapters, dissertations, conference papers, and audio-visual materials.

The documents have been indexed by Rutgers University Center of Alcohol Studies since 1987. The primary focus is on research and professional materials dealing with beverage alcohol, its use and related consequences. It also includes a small collection of educational and prevention materials.

Thursday, February 24, 2011

National Health Reform

You will be aware that on 13 February 2011, the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) agreed to a new deal on national health reform between the Australian Government and the States and Territories. You can read the Heads of Agreement document here, with more information on the government's Your Health website. NSW Health also has a summary from the Director General on its website.

Much has been written about the reform and many details are still to be decided. One interesting article just published in Inside Story is by James Gillespie, Deputy Director of the Menzies Centre for Health Policy at the University of Sydney: The Gillard health program: reform without change?. He writes that markets and demand are transforming the health system, but the policy debate isn’t catching up.

A surgical safety checklist for Australia and New Zealand

The World Health Organization (WHO) established a “Safe Surgery Saves Lives Study Group” that developed a surgical safety checklist intended to be globally applicable. WHO expected the checklist to be adapted for use in particular environments and this has been done in Australia and New Zealand resulting in an improved checklist for our countries. Hospitals in Australia and New Zealand have had checklists for many years but they have not necessarily been the most appropriate nor used reliably or consistently.
Read the full article here and download the checklist.

Growing up in Australia: the longitudinal study of Australian children

The Australian Institute of Family Studies has published their annual report Growing up in Australia: the longitudinal study of Australian children. Based on an ongoing study involving 10,000 families across Australia, this paper addresses a range of research questions about parenting, family relationships, childhood education, non-parental child care and health.

Perceived barriers and facilitators to mental health help-seeking in young people

Adolescents and young adults frequently experience mental disorders, yet tend not to seek help. This systematic review aims to summarise reported barriers and facilitators of help-seeking in young people. The article recommends that strategies for improving help-seeking by adolescents and young adults should focus on improving mental health literacy, reducing stigma, and taking into account the desire of young people for self-reliance. Click here to open the review.

Nutrition and the Aging Brain

The journal Nutrition Reviews, is giving free access to the special Supplement, Nutrition and the Aging Brain.

As the world's population ages there is increasing interest relating to the basis for changes in brain function with age...This was the subject of the 23rd Marabou Symposium in 2009 attended by over 40 international experts. The meeting benefited from nine formal lectures on which the articles in this supplement are based.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Health systems financing (WHO Report)

Health systems financing: the path to universal coverage is the latest World Health Organisation health report. "Good health is essential to human welfare and to sustained economic and social development. WHO's Member States have set themselves the target of developing their health financing systems to ensure that all people can use health services, while being protected against financial hardship associated with paying for them."

The report outlines what countries can do to modify their financing systems so they can move more quickly towards the goal of universal coverage. It builds on new research and lessons learnt and provides an action agenda for countries at all stages of development. It proposes ways that the international community can better support efforts in low income countries to achieve universal coverage and improve health outcomes.

Medicinewise learning modules for consumers

Medicinewise Choices is a set of learning modules for consumers produced by The National Prescribing Service (NPS). The aim is to help people make the best decisions about their medicines, from understanding what actually constitutes a medicine, to what the active ingredients are and how they work and to understanding clinical trials.

The NPS site focusses on encouraging people to be better informed about what drugs they are taking and to know what questions to ask their doctor or pharmacist. There is also a section for health professionals including free educational and quality improvement activities in the form of case studies, clinical audits and pharmacy practice reviews on various therapeutic topics.

Health Workforce Australia website

The Council of Australian Governments (COAG) has launched Health Workforce Australia, a website they say will be a central hub to finding information on all things health workforce related in Australia.

HWA is concentrating on developing policy and programs across four main areas—workforce planning, policy and research; clinical education; innovation and reform of the health workforce; and the recruitment and retention of international health professionals. The site includes information on grants and tenders, discussion papers and progress reports on work programs.

Friday, February 11, 2011

Child outcomes from young motherhood

There is considerable evidence that childbearing at a young age is associated with poorer outcomes for both mother and child.

Young Motherhood and Child Outcomes is a report by Bruce Bradley from the Social Policy Research Centre using data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC). It shows that children aged 4-5 years whose mothers were under 25 when they were born have distinctly lower levels of functioning than those with older mothers and that this disadvantage carries through to education and labour market outcomes. Those born when their mother was in her teens are much less likely to be still in school from 16 to 18 years of age.

However, international research, supported by this study, suggests that children born to young mothers might still have had poor outcomes even if their mother had delayed their childbearing. "It is quite possible that such associations could arise because of the different characteristics of the mothers (and fathers) who have their children when young."

Review of Indigenous Male Health

The Kukatja Aboriginal males of the south-east Kimberley have been labelled "wounded and resilient". This article from the Australian Indigenous Health Reviews suggests that many indigenous males across Australia may be characterised the same way.

The authors of "Review of Indigenous Male Health", Andrea MacRae and others, argue that these people have been marginalised to the extent that they have lost their provider roles and suffered from diminished self-esteem and status, leading to high levels of alcohol abuse, self-harm and violence. Family life becomes dysfunctional and the model of masculinity is not attractive for boys, who have little incentive to participate in schooling or training. "The cycle of male disenfranchisement, demoralisation and poor health is thus perpetuated."

Pathways in Aged Care

There are many and varied paths through Australia’s aged care system according to a recent report from the AIHW. The report, Pathways in Aged Care : program use after assessment, looks at aged care program use by a group of 105,000 people who had completed an assessment by an ACAT team in 2003–04. One-third of this group had not previously used aged care services.

The report examines assessment patterns, care pathways, time to entry to permanent residential aged care and time to death over the 2 year period following their first assessment. One of the findings was that for many people, their first contact with the aged care system is through an ACAT assessment. "For example, just over 40% of the cohort with no previous use of aged care programs accessed Home and Community Care or Veteran’s Home Care services following an ACAT assessment, even though no ACAT assessment is required to access these programs. This suggests that the ACAT assessments seemed to be a way of getting information about community care programs."

National Road Safety Strategy

On average, four people are killed and 80 are seriously injured every day on Australia's roads. The Department of Infrastructure and Transport has asked the heads of transport and roads agencies around the country to work together to prepare a new 10-year National Road Safety Strategy for the period from 2011 to 2020.
Submissions and feedback to the National road safety strategy 2011-2020: draft for consultation will be accepted up until 18 February. The draft contains a range of initiatives and interventions in four key areas - Safe Roads, Safe Speeds, Safe Vehicles and Safe People.

Monday, February 07, 2011

Drug resistance in influenza

ABC Radio National's Science Show has recently aired a fascinating interview, Fighting influenza drug resistance, all about molecules and salts and membranes and how flu viruses fight drugs. Robin Williams interviewed Professor Isaiah Arkin from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem whose team has discovered the process of resistance in the flu virus. Drugs serve to plug holes in membranes through which chemicals flow, but the virus resists by increasing the size of the hole. Arkin says, "people might think that we spend all our energy to move, to think, metabolise. No, it's to keep proper salt concentrations."
This new knowledge will allow new drugs to be developed to fight the resistance. "What we want is to suffocate the machinery that allows the virus to control its acidity."
You can listen to the podcast or read the transcript here.

The Impact of eHealth

The open access journal PLoS Medicine has just published a British study, The Impact of ehealth on the quality and safety of health care : a systematic overview.

The authors conclude, "There is a large gap between the postulated and empirically demonstrated benefits of eHealth technologies. In addition, there is a lack of robust research on the risks of implementing these technologies and their cost-effectiveness has yet to be demonstrated, despite being frequently promoted by policymakers and 'techno-enthusiasts' as if this was a given." In the light of this, they recommend ehealth technologies should be evaluated against a comprehensive set of measures including socio-technical factors throughout implementation and adoption.

Transparency in health care

The US-based Commonwealth Fund supports a regular podcast called "New Directions in Health Care". The podcasts are always interesting but often not necessarily relevant to the Australian system. However a recent program, Transparency in Health Care, can be applied across the board. It looks at "how sharing information about quality and costs with the public, payers, and health care professionals may change the way health care is delivered."

Wednesday, February 02, 2011

Report on government services 2011

The latest Report on Government Services has just been released. It contains chapters on:

  • Ambulance events
  • Public hospitals
  • Maternity services
  • Primary and community health
  • Breast cancer detection and management
  • Mental health
  • Aged care services
  • Services for people with disability
  • Child protection and out-of-home care services

The report can be downloaded by chapter only or as 2 volumes. PDF factsheets for each section are available.

Consensus standards for the care of children and adolescents in Australian health services

These are the first national standards to specifically consider the health care needs of children and adolescents and to address the co-location of children and adolescents with adult patients in health care settings. The Standards were collaboratively developed under the auspices of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) and are endorsed by the Association for the Wellbeing of Children in Healthcare, Children’s Hospitals Australasia and the Australian College of Children and Young People’s Nurses.
The Standards and associated RACP policy are available on the RACP website (http://www.racp.edu.au/page/policy-and-advocacy/paediatrics-and-child-health).