As the world ponders the implications of President Trump 2.0 and Project 2025, we look another way – to new publications that support healthy economic re-design, feminist leadership, and health financing reform, and that challenge tobacco science to explicitly adopt an anti-racist approach
The quotable?
By understanding the various stakeholders involved in health financing reform, their relative power, interests and position, along with the institutions that shape the bargaining process and the related contextual and economic factors, strategies can be developed to overcome or take into account stakeholders’ resistance or support.”
Economic redesign and other climate updates
In case you’d like to read about something other than Project 2025 et al…A new report by the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose in London issues a powerful challenge to governments and policymakers to revolutionise economic policy to prioritise sustainability and equity.
The report, Mission oriented industrial strategy, says the greatest challenges facing the world today – including global warming, weak health systems, the digital divide, rising inequality and inequitable access to decent housing – are direct results of how we choose to design our economies.
Overcoming these challenges will require a fundamentally different approach to economic policy that proactively steers economic activity to be sustainable and inclusive, while leaving open the many bottom-up solutions required, says the report, which examines how to set, implement and govern this approach.
Climate and Environmental Whistleblowing: Information Guide
Global health news
BMJ Tobacco Control: Off-White: decentring Whiteness in tobacco science
The authors challenge those working in tobacco-related research to understand and address “how racism influences our own logic and the institutions within which scientific knowledge is produced”.
“Actively identifying and implementing institutional and structural changes to disrupt White epistemic oppression and hegemony can support desegregation in tobacco sciences,” they say.
“We can and must critically examine exclusionary policies and structures in tobacco control institutions, and reshape our science to be inclusionary.”
Tobacco researchers should meaningfully engage with anti-racist science and explicitly adopt an anti-racist approach, including Indigenous methodologies and wise practices, measurement of and mechanisms to address and mitigate racism, and restorative justice practices in publication.
“We can practise citational justice by citing Black women, and queer, Indigenous and/or non-academic writers; credit community partners as lead or coauthors; re-envision the value of highly racialised journal impact factors and implement metrics for anti-racist science; and publish with open access to ensure that research results are accessible to community members as well as academics.”
BMJ: Deepfakes and doctors: How people are being fooled by social media scams
The Political Economy of Health Financing: How-to Guide lays out a structured way to organise and analyse key political economy factors that can impact health financing reform, with the aim of supporting implementation of Universal Health Coverage. It explicitly recognises the importance of political economy factors in influencing health financing reform trajectories.
It is not intended as a toolbox or comprehensive mapping of all the potential political economy factors and strategies related to health financing reform, but provides a stepwise process for analysis and structured thinking about issues related to health financing and political economy.
“By understanding the various stakeholders involved in health financing reform, their relative power, interests and position, along with the institutions that shape the bargaining process and the related contextual and economic factors, strategies can be developed to overcome or take into account stakeholders’ resistance or support.”
BMJ: Dismantling the structures of inequality: why we need feminist leadership in the health sector
“Health sectors tend to exhibit what has been termed ‘inequality regimes’ – reflecting systematic and deeply embedded inequalities in workforces. Despite women comprising the majority of the healthcare workforce, they occupy only a quarter of senior roles. The lack of women’s progression to senior leadership is reflected in pay gap data. Analysis by the International Labour Organisation and World Health Organization finds a gender pay gap in the health and social care sector of 15-24% – bigger than the gaps in non-health sectors.”
COVID
NEJM: Postacute Sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 Infection in the Pre-Delta, Delta, and Omicron Eras
In this study involving 441,583 veterans with SARS-CoV-2 infection and 4,748,504 noninfected contemporaneous controls, the cumulative incidence of PASC at 1 year after infection decreased over the course of the pandemic, from a high of 10.42 cases per 100 persons (95% CI, 10.22 to 10.64) among unvaccinated persons during the pre-delta era to a low of 3.50 cases per 100 persons (95% CI, 3.31 to 3.71) among vaccinated persons during the omicron era. However, even after this substantial decrease, the cumulative incidence of PASC at 1 year among vaccinated persons during the omicron era was not negligible. The large number of infected persons during the omicron era, the large numbers of ongoing new infections and reinfections, and the poor uptake of vaccination may translate into a high number of persons with PASC.
NEJM editorial: Viral Variants, Vaccinations, and Long Covid – New Insights
What are the messages from this study? First, vaccinations can prevent many but not all cases of long Covid. Second, viral variants influence the risk of PASC. Third, the study suggests that new cases of PASC may continue unabated, owing to a potentially greater prevalence of metabolic dysfunction and its associated coexisting conditions among persons infected during the omicron era. Taken together, changes in the clinical presentation of long Covid are a function of “points in time” and must be considered in any future trial or study design, as well as in clinical assessments.
JAMA research letter: Progression From Presymptomatic to Clinical Type 1 Diabetes After COVID-19 Infection
First Nations in focus
Lowitja Institute submission to the Inquiry into economic self-determination and opportunities for First Nations Australians
New England Times: 1 van, 3 days, 20 dentistry students, 15,000 mouthguards: TAMS ambitious plan for the Koori Knockout
Public health
Trans fat: The invisible killer we must eliminate from world’s food supply
#AusPol
Open letter calling for release of National Suicide Prevention Strategy
Philanthropy report and Media release
The Productivity Commission has made 19 final recommendations, focusing on four main areas:
- improving the system that determines which charities have access to tax‑deductible donations
- improving access to philanthropic networks for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people
- enhancing the regulatory framework for charities and ancillary funds, and
- improving public information on charities and donations.
#CroakeyREAD
Conference Watch
Awards
Events upcoming
