February report for Epidemiology for Policy and Practice

3 February 2021

Awards

Jill Guthrie and Emily Banks were awarded a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for their exceptional service to the country and to population health.

Outreach and engagement

Multiple causes of death project: Grace Joshy, Karen Bishop and Saliu Balogun met with Global Burden of Disease researchers from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, University of Washington to discuss the use of multiple causes of death in relation to assessment of burden of disease.

The TGA Notice of final decision to amend the current Poisons Standard – Nicotine cited the work of Emily Banks and the e-Cigarettes team.  Emily Banks and the e-Cigarettes team made a submission to the TGA interim decision made under regulation 42ZCZN of the Therapeutic Goods Regulations 1990 regarding amendment to the current Poisons Standard.

The report from the Select Committee on Tobacco Harm Reduction cited the work of Emily Banks and the e-Cigarettes team.  The team made a submission to Senate Committee on Tobacco Harm Reduction on 5 November (Submission 157). Emily Banks presented to the Senate Select Committee on Friday 13 November.

Katie Thurber and team developed community and policy briefs for the publication on Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander smoking and mortality.

The CVD implementation team presented to Thiitu Tharrmay in Dec and will present again in March. The protocol for Objective 2 will be discussed.

The team continues to liaise with data custodians regarding use of NPS Medicinewise and nKPI datasets to identify high performing services in chronic disease screening and follow up, as part of Objective 2.

The team continues to engage with external stakeholders including the Heart Foundation, Health Services Data Advisory Committee, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Saltwater People and Ninti One.

The team’s first progress meeting for 2021 with the Department of Health is scheduled for mid-February.

Media releases/interest

Family and Community Safety Study (FaCtS) Study released 10 December 2020: https://rsph.anu.edu.au/news-events/news/family-violence-research-helps-closing-gap

https://rsph.anu.edu.au/files/CHM200082%20TAWTBWMCI%20v9%20WEB.pdf

Australia Day Award media:

https://www.cowraguardian.com.au/story/7096319/hopes-award-will-highlight-cowras-justice-reinvestment-project/

https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/7095242/your-life-is-healthier-and-longer-thanks-to-this-researcher/

https://www.anu.edu.au/news/all-news/honours-highlight-first-nations-justice-reform

Various media for - Thurber K, Banks E, Joshy G, Soga K, Marmor A, Benton G, White S, Eades S, Maddox R, Calma T, Lovett R.  Tobacco smoking and mortality among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults in Australia.  International Journal of Epidemiology, 2021, 1-13. doi: 10.1093/ije/dyaa274. Published January 2021.

https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/am/first-nations-smoking/13087824

https://www.msn.com/en-au/video/sport/study-examines-impact-of-smoking-on-first-nations-people/vp-BB1d3Aex

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jan/25/smoking-causes-half-of-indigenous-australian-deaths-over-45-study-shows

New staff

Dr Eden Barrett has started as a Research Fellow with the Tackling Indigenous Smoking Team. Eden is currently conducting quantitative research evaluating the impact and outcomes of the Tackling Indigenous Smoking Regional Tobacco Control Grants, including assessing the effect of the grants on smoking prevalence and other tobacco-related indicators among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Danielle Butler has relocated to Canberra and is now working on ANU campus after having been working remotely in Brisbane for several years.

Papers accepted/published:

Thurber K, Banks E, Joshy G, Soga K, Marmor A, Benton G, White S, Eades S, Maddox R, Calma T, Lovett R.  Tobacco smoking and mortality among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults in Australia.  International Journal of Epidemiology, 2021, 1-13. doi: 10.1093/ije/dyaa274. Published January 2021.

Thurber K, Walker J, Batterham P, Gee G, Chapman J, Priest N, Cohen R, Jones R, Richardson A, Calear A, Williams D, Lovett R. Developing and validating measures of self-reported everyday and healthcare discrimination for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults.  International Journal for Equity in Health, 2021, 20(14). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12939-020-01351-9. Published January 2021.

Joshy G, Thandrayen J, Koczwara B, Butow P, Laidsaar-Powell R, Rankin N, Canfell K, Stubbs J, Grogan P, Bailey L, Yazidjoglou A, Banks E. Disability, psychological distress and quality of life in relation to cancer diagnosis and cancer type: population-based Australian study of 22,505 cancer survivors and 244,000 people without cancer. BMC Med 2020; 18:372. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-020-01830-4 . Published 1 Dec 2020.

Banks E, Welsh J, Joshy G. Martin M, Paige E, Korda R. Comparison of cardiovascular disease risk factors, assessment and management in men and women, including consideration of absolute risk: A nationally representative cross-sectional study. BMJ Open 2020; 10:e038761. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2020-038761 .  Published 22 Dec 2020.

Progress on research projects

Ben O’Neill recently published a new R package called utilities.  The package is available on CRAN at https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=utilities.  This package assists users with some preliminary data analysis functions, including mapping analysis for factor variables in data-frames, and functions to assist with computing moments of pooled samples.  An academic paper relating to the moment functions in the package is presently under submission.

The CVD team is developing the first report deliverable to government as part of the first project objective (informing chronic disease risk assessment and management). The report includes a strategy for optimising CVD risk algorithms for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

The e-cigarettes team is starting synthesis on the systematic review of Health Outcomes of e-cigarettes. A deliverable required under the Research Contract with the Department of Health.

The Whole-of-Population Health project team are gearing up to host a forum next week (10 Feb 2021) on ‘Linked data for better health: Policy and practice forum.  Using multi-agency data integration project (MADIP) data to answer policy-relevant questions on health in Australia’.