Weight loss diets - which ones are the most successful?

This is the sixty four dollar question for many of us! One of my favourite programs, ABC Radio National's Health Report, this week featured an interview with the author of a new study in Israel comparing the effectiveness of three diets: low fat, low carb and a Mediterranean diet which concentrated on olive oil, nuts and fish. The randomised trial looked at moderately obese 51 year olds over two years and the main discovery was that the low carb diet and the Mediterranean diet were much more efficient in weight loss than the low fat diet, although all the diets worked. They also found an improved lipid profile in those people on the low carb diet.

You can read the interview transcript on the Health Report website, and contact the library for a copy of the research paper: Shai I et al. "Weight Loss with a Low-Carbohydrate, Mediterranean, or Low-Fat Diet." New England Journal of Medicine, July 17, 2008. 359(3) :229-241.

Household expenditure on health: A snapshot

For those of you interested in facts and figures, The Australian Bureau of Statistics has just released this report, which presents an overview of the health expenditure of households in Australia. It is based on data from the 2003–4 ABS Household Expenditure Survey and the 2004–5 ABS National Health Survey.

One of the results was that despite different incomes, households spend on average the same proportion (5%) of their disposable income on medical care and health expenses.

Healthcare associated infection - new report

Health care infection rates have hit the media in the last couple of weeks and now The Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care has released a report called Reducing harm to patients through healthcare associated infection : the role of surveillance. This report summarises the state of healthcare associated infections (HAI) in Australia and makes recommendations for reducing HAI through surveillance and prevention. The Commission reports that hospital infection rates could be halved if health workers simply washed their hands more regularly and more thoroughly. It has found that around 200,000 people each year are contracting infections within the healthcare system and two million extra bed days are occupied by patients because they have picked up healthcare associated infection. The total cost is about $20 million per year in this country.

Sources for Drug and Alcohol research

The National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre at UNSW has just published a really useful document called Searching the grey literature to access information on Drug and Alcohol Research : a resource to identify drug related databases and websites, by Bianca Calabria and a team of writers.
Grey literature is material that is not formally published by commercial publishers or peer reviewed journals. It includes reports, fact sheets, conference proceedings and other documents from institutions, organisations, and government agencies. It's often hidden away on the Internet and difficult to unearth, but can be extremely valuable. This document gives a comprehensive list of databases and websites where you can freely find information on this topic.

Living is for everyone - suicide prevention report

The Australian Department of Health and Ageing has just published the revised Living Is For Everyone (LiFe) : a framework for the prevention of suicide in Australia. This 52 page document provides updated information to mental health professionals and the wider community, and aims to enhance the understanding and prevention of suicide and self harm in Australia. Supporting resources, news, fact sheets and contacts for suicide prevention may be found at the LiFe website.

Searchme.com

Searchme is an intriguing new attempt to make web research more like how we look for information in print resources. Its search results page is intuitive, highly visual and yet easy for us text-oriented folks to use. Solely in terms of user-friendliness, Searchme is one of the best search engines around. It also does a surprisingly good job at clustering results, and it has a nice feature for easily sharing web pages with others. Note that this site is in public beta, meaning that it is not in its final version, and some features and functions may change without notice. And it has indexed “merely” one billion pages, so it’s working with a significantly smaller index than, say, Google, which hit the one-billion-page mark way back in 2000.
What is particularly impressive is the search results page. Think of holding a hand of cards – you see one card fully and the other cards in slices. Searchme’s search results page looks somewhat similar. In the middle of the page is an image of the first retrieved web page, with your search words highlighted. On the right is a smaller image of the next result. Drag that to the middle of the screen and the first page shuffles off to the left and a fresh page appears on the right. Double-click any image and you are taken directly to that page, either in the same window or, if you change your preferences, in a fresh window or tab.

Australian e-Health Research Centre

CSIRO today welcomed the launch of the Australian e-Health Research Centre (AEHRC) as a national venture, supported by A$20 million in funding from the Federal and Queensland governments.
Research undertaken at the AEHRC is leading to the development of simulated training tools (enabling colonoscopists, for instance, to become more skilled), home monitoring systems for patients recovering from heart attack, and improved imaging techniques to facilitate early diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease. Established in 2003 as a joint venture between CSIRO and the Queensland Government, the AEHRC is a key delivery point into the health system for CSIRO health research based on information and communication technologies (ICT).

Patient information - where to look.

We are often asked for help with finding authoritative information for patients on a variety of health issues. I thought I’d share just a few of our favourite consumer health sites that you can reliably recommend to your clients. These ones are general in coverage.

HealthInsite is an Australian Government initiative, aimed at providing "up-to-date and quality assessed information on important health topics." It has a good A-Z listing of health topics with some information developed in-house as well as linking to other agencies.

MedlinePlus is provided by the US National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes for Health. There are searchable health topics in 40 languages, plus an online health encyclopaedia and dictionary. A bit US-centric, but very comprehensive.

Patient UK is a British consumer health site, set up and authored by doctors. "The authors write evidence based information leaflets on a wide range of medical and health topics. They also review health and illness related websites and link to many of these."

UpToDate for Patients has evidence-based literature on a wide range of health issues. Either search by keyword or narrow down through browsing. Well-referenced and free for everyone.

FamilyDoctor is from the American Academy of Family Physicians. Also worth a look.

Of course, there are many more reliable sites - I could go on for pages. Tell your clients they should look for government agencies, non-profit organisations and clinician-based sites, as a general rule of thumb.

Finally, if you're looking to print off a handout for a patient, you can find quite good ones (although US-based) on the clinical UpToDate site (which you have access to through the link on your desktop within NCAHS), or on MDConsult or Nursing Consult - both accessible through CIAP.

GreenFILE environmental database now free

Ebsco has recently made this database free to search. It focusses on the relationship between humans and the environment, covering topics such as global warming, recycling and alternate fuel sources. GreenFILE searches scholarly and general interest journals, as well as government documents and reports and connects the environment with other disciplines such as agriculture, education, law, health and technology. The total number of records is currently about 295,000, and full text is provided for more than 4,600 of these.

If you search the database and find an article or document you want to read that is not in full-text, please just email or phone us at your library and we will tirelessly track it down for you!

Competency Standards now available free online!

The 'Competency standards for the advanced registered nurse' and 'Competency standards for the advanced enrolled nurse' are now available free online at the Australian Nursing Federation website.
And the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Council Incorporated (ANMC) also has a number of Competency Standards free online, including those for the Nurse Practitioner and the Midwife.

Australia's Health 2008 Conference Presentations

How are we going? How do we know?
This one-day conference held in June, provided insights into key issues facing the health of Australians and their health services. Where we have come from, what's happening now and what's likely to happen in the future!
Specific areas covered on the day with PowerPoint presentations provided include-
Biggest burdens: Cancer survival and prevalence in Australia, Oral health priority areas, Mental health and co-morbidities, Co-morbidities between CVD, chronic kidney disease, diabetes and obesity .
Whose health - focus on inequalities: Health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, Rural health, Socioeconomic Status , Waiting for care.
Prevention, treatment and performance: Information needs of the future, Australia's national cancer screening programs, Risk and prevention, Expenditure and projections

ARCHI - Connecting Clinicians

ARCHI likes to call itself the "brains trust of the healthcare centre". It's all about disseminating information about innovations from health care professionals across the community, and trying to prevent the reinvention of the wheel. It was originally set up by the Department of Health and Ageing in 1998, and has now been adopted by NSW Health as part of their commitment to knowledge sharing, and to support their Clinical Services Redesign Program.
You have access to everything on the site through your usual CIAP username and password (contact your librarian if you're not sure what this is). On the ARCHI website you can find a searchable electronic library of innovations, pathways, clinical tools and reports. There's also an enquiry service, a list of seminars, a newsletter and discussion groups to join. If you are working on, or have just completed, a project which has improved healthcare delivery, the ARCHI team would love to hear from you. Fill out a form on the website and share your knowledge!

Get Healthy: Your Middle-Aged Heart Will Thank You

Your diet isn't all that healthy, and you haven't been to the gym since who knows when. You can't shed those pesky 20 extra pounds, but what's the use, you may ask -- after all, you're well into middle age. To all that whining, Dr. Dana King would say: "It's not too late. If you make [healthy] changes now, it has a tremendous impact." Particularly on your heart. Even in middle age. King, a professor of family medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina, is one of several researchers who have proven in recent years that it's never too late to get healthy -- and that adopting better habits even in midlife translates to less disease and a longer life.
King led a recent study that evaluated the cardiovascular effects of adopting healthier habits in middle age -- what he calls the "turning back the clock study." And surprise! It works. What's more, you don't have to be fanatical, but the more healthy habits you adopt, not surprisingly, the healthier you become.

Australia's Health 2008

Australia is one of the healthiest nations in the world, taking great strides in many health areas-but there are groups whose health still lags behind, according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare's latest national report card on health. The report, Australia's Health 2008, launched yesterday by Health Minister Nicola Roxon at the 'Australia's Health 2008' conference in Canberra, shows falling death rates for cancer, heart disease, strokes, and injury.

The report also shows that Australians enjoy one of the highest life expectancies in the world-an average of 81.4 years, second only to Japan.
Australian men reaching the age of 65 can now expect to live to about 83 years, and women to 86 years-about 6 years more than their counterparts a century ago. Disadvantaged Australians, wherever they live, are more likely to have shorter lives, higher levels of disease risk factors and lower use of preventive health services.


The full report can be viewed online here.