Graeme Jackson, Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health
Saying someone has epilepsy is a little like saying they’re ill. Its cause can vary from a brain tumour to an inherited genetic condition, the consequence of injury or a disorder affecting the brain.
Older people are more likely to drop out of the workforce for good when they’re sick than young people.
Bacho/Shutterstock
Economic modelling shows that policies to reduce chronic diseases can have large economic benefits –A$4.5 billion a year for diabetes alone – by reducing health costs and boosting the workforce.
Public hospital funding is in a critical condition.
Anna Jurkovska/Shutterstock
Any health reform proposals should start by addressing public hospitals and chronic care. But successful change in these areas requires getting the state-Commonwealth funding and incentives right.
The economic cost of workplace injury and death equals about 4% of the world’s gross domestic product.
Jens Schott Knudsen/Flickr
Pregnant women get all kinds of advice but reliable, evidence-based information on what they should eat for their good health as well as that of their developing child is often sorely missing.
Despite widespread condemnation, Tony Abbott has defended suggesting people living in remote communities are making a ‘lifestyle choice.’
AAP/Lukas Coch
Abbott’s claim that people in remote communities are making a “lifestyle choice” reveals an underlying view that social circumstances are the responsibility of individuals, rather than societies.
New Zealand’s got more for export than lamb and All Blacks.
Health secretary Jeremy Hunt has said he wants to develop “integrated care organisations” in the English NHS, with NHS hospital trusts taking a lead role in forming them. This has been challenged, quite…
Australians have one the longest life expectancies in the world but are living with growing levels of lifestyle-induced chronic illness, according to the latest national health report card. The Australian…
Erection problems are common but they can be embarrassing for men to discuss with partners and doctors. The sales of erection drugs on the internet or billboard advertising are boosted by keeping erectile…
As a medical student in India in the early 1980s, the biggest problems I encountered were under-nutrition, sanitation, high burden of infectious diseases and woefully inadequate vaccination of children…
Antioxidants are a commonly promoted feature of health foods and supplements. They’re portrayed as the good forces that fight free radicals – nasty molecules causing damage thought to hasten ageing and…
Nearly a third of agriculture workers are over 55.
Image from www.shutterstock.com
**A more sustainable Australia* As we hit the half-way mark of the 2013 election campaign, we’ve asked academics to look at some of the long-term issues affecting Australia – the issues that will shape…
People who survived cancer as children may be out of the woods but not without a few scratches.
Flickr/David Bunting
Jo Adetunji, The Conversation e Emily Lindsay Brown, The Conversation
Children who survive cancer treatment are much more likely to suffer health problems when they are adults, according to a new study. Researchers who looked at more than 1,700 survivors of childhood cancer…
Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne
Chercheur au Centre de recherche de l’Institut universitaire de cardiologie et de pneumologie de Québec et Professeur titulaire au Département de médecine, Université Laval