Cardiovascular disease and diabetes - OECD report

Cardiovascular Disease and Diabetes: Policies for Better Health and Quality of Care examines how countries perform in their ability to prevent, manage and treat cardiovascular disease (CVD) and diabetes. The last 50 years have witnessed remarkable improvements in CVD outcomes. Since 1960, overall CVD mortality rates have fallen by over 60%, but these improvements are not evenly spread across OECD countries, and the rising prevalence of diabetes and obesity are threatening to offset gains.

OECD (2015), Cardiovascular Disease and Diabetes: Policies for Better Health and Quality of Care, OECD Health Policy Studies, OECD Publishing, Paris.  DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264233010-en

NB - pdf version requires a subscription - use the "read" option to read chapters online.

Suicide in women

Suicide Prevention Australia has just published a report which looks at the data relating to suicide and suicidal behaviour in women. Suicide and suicidal behaviour in women – issues and prevention outlines the risk factors, the impact of attitudes about gender and the policy environment.

The key findings include the fact that women have higher rates of suicidal behaviour than men - that includes planning and attempting suicide.  In 2013, 637 women died by suicide in Australia, and it especially effects younger women, and where there has been a reduction in suicides for young men since the 1990's, this has not been the case for young women.

Hanging is the most commonly used method of suicide for women (as it is for men) with poisoning by drugs being second most common. The number of women aged 15 - 24 years who injured themselves so severely that they require hospital treatment has increased by more than 50 per cent since 2000.  The issue of self-injury is discussed as an important indicator for women's health.

Reducing depressing in nursing home residents

According to an article recently published in The Conversation, 52% of aged care residents have symptoms of depression, compared with 10-15% of older people living in the community.  The author of Reducing depression in nursing homes requires more than just antidepressants, Sunil Bhar, is the Convenor of Clinical Psychology Programs at Swinburne University of Technology, and the co-founder of Swinburne's Wellbeing Clinic for Older Adults.  He discusses various psychological interventions that can help people going into aged care overcome some of their issues and improve mental health care in these facilities.  "Rather than simply medicating the growing proportion of Australians who are admitted to aged care, we need to treat the whole person and the underlying causes of their depression."

The road to reducing dementia

This briefing paper from Deeble Institute scholar, Kimberly Ashby-Mitchell, examines the evidence surrounding dementia onset and the role of diet and physical activity in brain health.

The road to reducing dementia onset and prevalence: are diet and physical activity interventions worth investing in? discusses the fact that dementia is now the second leading cause of death in Australia, with over a quarter of a million sufferers at present.  Research shows that high ratios of saturated fats and excessive caloric intake have been found to be associated with impaired cognitive function, while increased intakes of fish,vegetables and legumes have been reported to have a protective brain effect.

Increased levels of physical activity have been found to promote neuroprotective changes in the hippocampus of the brain – a region central to learning and memory, and one of the first areas affected by dementia.  

Living with cognitive and intellectual disability

Two reports have been published by the La Trobe Living with Disability Research Centre this month. Supporting people with cognitive disabilities in decision making – processes and dilemmas presents the findings of a study which had two components: 1) a systematic search of the peer reviewed literature from 2000 to identify published research on processes of support for decision making of people with cognitive disability, and enablers and barriers to the provision of support, and 2) an exploratory study into processes and key dilemmas that arise in providing effective support for decision making to people with cognitive disability, with particular focus on people with intellectual disability and acquired brain injury.

Optimising outcomes for people with intellectual disability in supported living arrangements paints a detailed picture of the life circumstances of people in supported living as well as providing more evidence about its benefits compared to group homes and the overlapping populations of these two service types.

Cancer mortality trends and projections: 2013 to 2025

This web-based publication from the AIHW presents mortality projections for selected cancers and all cancers combined from 2013 to 2025 based on mortality trends from 1968 to 2012.

Cancer mortality trends and projections, 2013-2025 indicates that as cancer death rates have generally decreased over time since 1968, this trend is projected to continue, with an estimated 56,265 deaths from all cancers combined projected for 2025.

The AIHW has also updated its Cancer and screening web pages this week.

Mobile phones and infection in a hospital setting

Health care workers hold an important role in the transmission of hospital acquired infection in a health care setting. In the current study, swab samples were taken from 140 healthcare personnel. Two samples were collected from each subject. One from mobiles and the other from hands, constituting  a total of 280 swab samples.
From 140 hand swabs taken, 121 were positive for bacterial growth and from the corresponding 140 mobile phone samples, 99 were positive. The 140 workers were divided into 4 groups and overall, technicians had the highest rate for mobile phone bacterial growth and doctors the highest for  bacterial growth on hands.

Venkatesan. A. (2015). The role of hand hygiene and mobile phones in transmitting hospital 
acquired infection. International Journal of Biomedical and Advance Research,  6(05), 435-437.

Quality Improvement Guide

The Health Quality Improvement Partnership in the UK has published a freely available guide obringing together twelve quality improvement (QI) methods, providing an overview of each and practical advice on how and when to implement them, with illustrative case examples.
QI methods covered include clinical audit; Plan, Do, Study, Act; model for improvement; LEAN/Six Sigma; performance benchmarking, process mapping and statistical process control. It is aimed at all professionals with an interest in QI.

Quality Improvement Methods Guide (if you have difficulty opening the document once you are on the HQIP website, right click and save it first)

Patient, Recruit Thyself - Clinical Trials

Improving rates of recruitment into clinical trials, especially later-stage trials that require more participants, is a big challenge facing the Australian clinical trials sector. A trial can only be successful with a number of essentials including sufficient funding, talent and clinical know-how, but most importantly, an adequate number of participants.

Recent developments by the National Health and Medical Research Council and the Australian Government Department of Industry and Science looked at ways to give potential participants the ability to register for trials themselves. Their recently launched Australian Clinical Trials website (http://www.australianclinicaltrials.gov.au) allows potential participants to search for a clinical trial for themselves. The website also include information on the what, why and how of clinical trials, including guides, fact sheets and e-learning modules.

Australian Clinical Trials website

Trends in alcohol consumption

This report from the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education.finds that the number of Australians aged between 14 and 17 who are binge drinking has decreased by half over the last 13 years, while the number of abstainers has more than doubled. There has also been an increase in the age at which many young people first drink alcohol.

However at the other end of the scale, even though Australia’s overall level of drinking has declined, the top ten per cent of drinkers are now responsible for an increasing proportion of the total consumption (from 48.9 per cent in 2001 up to 53.2 per cent in 2013). There is a definite need to ensure that policy and prevention focuses on older adults as well as young people, since Australians over the age of 40 have shown signs of increasingly problematic drinking between 2001 and 2013.

Livingston, M. (2015). Understanding recent trends in Australian alcohol consumption. Canberra:
Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education.

WHO Global tobacco epidemic report 2015

This year's WHO report on the global tobacco epidemic details the continued success in global tobacco control.  Much progress has been made with their MPOWER measures in the last ten years. These include smoke-free environments, cessation programmes, warning labels, mass media, advertising bans and taxation. 

The report provides country-specific data and has a special focus on tobacco taxation (as the least implemented measure worldwide) in all WHO Member States.

Systematic review of surgical never events

Wrong-site surgery, retained surgical items, and surgical fires : A systematic review of surgical never events is a paper published in JAMA Surgery examining 138 studies which looked at these events since 2004.  The median rates were about 1.32 per 10,000 for retained surgical items and 0.9% per 100,000 procedures involving wrong-site surgery.  There were many different causes for specific events, but miscommunication was a common theme in many.

Hempel S, Maggard-Gibbons M, Nguyen DK, Dawes AJ, Miake-Lye IM, Beroes JM, et al
JAMA Surgery. 2015 [epub]. http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jamasurg.2015.0301.  Contact your health library for the full text of the article.

Disability support services report

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare has published a health bulletin, Disability support services: services provided under the National Disability Agreement 2013–14.  In this period approximately 320,000 people used services under this agreement, which was a 3% increase on the previous period.  Of these people,  44% used community support services, 41% used employment services, 18% used community access services, 14% used accommodation support services, and 12% used respite services. Most were under 50 years old, male and Australia born.  70% of those in the labour force were unemployed. 

Alcohol and other drug treatment services in Australia 2013-14

This report, published recently by the AIHW indicates that around 119,000 clients in 2013-2014 were estimated to have received over 180,700 treatment episodes from 795 publicly funded alcohol and other drug treatment agencies. Alcohol was the most common drug needing treatment for people aged over 30, and cannabis was the most common for those aged under 30.  Counselling was the most common form of treatment sought.

The report gives details on the agencies available, the drugs of concern and the types of treatment provided and compares the data to previous years. For example, since 2009-10, there has been an increase in use of amphetamines (from 7% to 17%) and an increase in smoking/inhaling as the method of administration for amphetamines.

The Sedentary Office - guidelines for moving in the office

License: CC0 Public Domain

A review of the evidence surrounding the health benefits for office workers to stand up and move around has led to a set of guidelines published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.   Commissioned by Public Health England, an international group of experts from the UK, US and Australia have published The sedentary office: an expert statement on the growing case for change towards better health and productivity. The authors recommend that desk-based workers spend at least two hours of their working day standing or moving, and that this should gradually progress to four hours a day.

Other recommendations made include regularly breaking up seated-based work with standing (as can be achieved with sit-stand desks) and avoiding long periods of standing still, which could be just as harmful as sitting for a long time. The authors suggest that these recommendations should be part of every workplace culture.

Young Australians, illness and education

Chronically-ill children who need to take extended absences from school are neither officially acknowledged nor assisted to keep up, according to this report from Julie White and Karen Roauer at the Victoria Institute: Young Australians, illness and education: report on the national database project.

Advances in medicine mean that many children are surviving diseases, but are struggling to keep abreast of their education. This report provides a detailed summary of education, health and demographic information about 2360 Australian children and young people who live with significant health conditions.  The study aims to provide an empirical base for policy recommendation and further investigation and to contribute to the growing body of evidence about pressing educational issues related to these children and young people. 

Transport to treatment for people with chronic disease

The Council of Social Service of NSW has published Staying alive: transport to treatment for people living with a chronic disease.  This report focuses on the unmet health transport needs associated with two of the most prevalent chronic diseases, cancer and chronic kidney disease. 

Gaps in the current system result in inequities in access to these services for those who need it most. This includes people with limited financial means and fewer public transport options. The extent of this unmet need in NSW is unknown, but the findings of this report are based on a national survey of health professionals engaged in cancer and kidney disease care in 2014. The report reveals that:

• 77% of respondents in dialysis units, and 81% of respondents in cancer centres, reported some level of difficulty accessing transport to and from treatment
• 66% indicated that there were not enough parking spaces to meet demand at dialysis units
• The greatest burden of unmet non-emergency transport needs was borne by older people (77%) people on low incomes (74%), people living in rural and regional areas (66%), people with a disability (44%), Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people (29%), and people from culturally diverse backgrounds (21%).

Hospital statistics reports 2013-2014

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare has released three new reports on hospital statistics:  

Australias hospitals 2013-14: at a glance - provides information on Australia's public and private hospitals. In 2013-14, there were 9.7 million hospitalisations, including 2.5 million involving surgery. Public hospitals provided care for 7.2 presentations to emergency departments, with 74% of patients seen within recommended times for their triage category and about 73% were completed within 4 hours.  

 

Non-admitted patient care 2013-14: Australian hospital statistics - In 2013-14, about 46 million occasions of service were provided for non-admitted patients by 558 public hospitals, including 6 million occasions of service for emergency care, 18 million for outpatient care and 22 million for other non-admitted patient care. 

 

Hospital resources 2013-14: Australian hospital statistics - presents a detailed overview of public and private hospital resources in Australia. In 2013-14, there were 747 public hospitals with over 58,600 beds that accounted for more than $44 billion of expenditure.  There were 612 private hospitals with almost 31,000 beds that accounted for more than $11 billion of expenditure.

Hospitals should be exemplars of healthy workplaces

This article, recently published in the Medical Journal of Australia, calls for hospitals to model policies and practices that promote health and safety.

The authors argue that hospitals should focus on health as well as illness and that reorienting their policies to reflect this should be an “integral part of the push for quality and safety in clinical care and also contributes to the triple bottom line for health care: better patient experience of care; better population health through improved social and environmental impacts; and better financial performance.”

Russell LM, Anstey MHR, Wells S. (2015)  Hospitals should be exemplars of healthy workplaces.
Medical Journal of Australia. 202(8):424-26. doi:10.5694/mja14.01437.  

Full text available through CIAP for NSW Health employees. 

Indigenous health and welfare APP

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare has released a new APP - Indigenous Health and Welfare Statistics.  At this stage it is only available on the Apple platform, and you can search for it in the App store under Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. 

The App is mainly based on the AIHW report, The Health and welfare of Australias Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples 2015 but includes some information from other reports.  The APP includes topics such as population, education, employment, health, housing, life expectancy and determinants of health.  It features a favourites page and a detailed glossary. 

Cancer Survivorship

This edition of Cancer Forum presents a series of articles articulating the state of cancer survivorship in Australia and work to improve psychosocial and cancer outcomes for those living after a diagnosis of cancer. While many people live for relatively long periods after their cancer diagnosis, we know a sizable proportion experience poor health and side-effects of cancer and its treatments.
Cancer survivorship;   July 2015 Vol 39 Issue No 2

Cancer Screening Statistics in Australia

Cancer screening programs aim to reduce illness and death resulting from cancer through an organised approach to screening. Measures of participation in cancer screening programs tell us how many people participate in these programs, and whether factors such as remoteness, socioeconomic status or Indigenous status mean that people are more likely to miss out on the benefits of screening.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare has released new cancer screening web pages:

Participation in BreastScreen Australia 2013-2014

Participation in the National Cervical Screening Program 2013-2014

An Introduction to Trauma Informed Care

ACATLGN has recently announced the launch of a free online learning website - An Introduction toTrauma Informed Care. This online learning has been designed to increase information and knowledge on the impact of experiences of adversity and trauma on children and young people. It contains information, resources, videos and links to provide a comprehensive introduction to trauma informed care.  

The program is designed as an easily accessed on-line introduction and learning program for families, carers and other professionals with responsibilities for the care of children who may need support as a result of challenging and potentially traumatic experiences. There are six modules that you can work through at your own pace, with free resources to download that accompany the modules.

The Australian Child & Adolescent Trauma, Loss & Grief Network is based at the Australian National University and is funded by the Australian Government.

Free e-learning-An Introduction to Trauma Informed Care           

FoodSwitch App

Created by the George Institute for Global Health in Australia, the FoodSwitch app is now the number one downloaded food scanning app in the Australian Appstore."The free app helps consumers find out what is in the food they are eating and suggests simple, alternative healthier choices. FoodSwitch also has several filters designed to allow consumers to focus on their specific dietary requirements, including SaltSwitch, SugarSwitch and GlutenSwitch." The app is free to download.
Click here for the FoodSwitch app.