At a time when populism is undermining support for evidence, Australians should be paying attention to what’s happening with health and healthcare in the United States – and The Health Wrap is here to help.
Dr Lesley Russell also brings updates on Ebola, global health, vaccination, and health reform, and links readers into wide-ranging research findings.
The quotable?
Science communication must do more than explain technical findings. It must demonstrate how science provides solutions that improve people’s lives. It must connect innovation to jobs, industries and communities. It must offer practical hope at a time when many Australians are questioning whether progress is still possible.”
Lesley Russell writes:
Around this time of the winter solstice, the days are noticeably shorter and cooler. Here in Sydney the days are often clear and sunny – perfect for walking my favourite routes around the harbour.
As is usually the case these days, this edition of The Health Wrap has a big focus on what is happening with health and healthcare in the United States; in part that’s because of my personal interests and involvement, but also because what is happening there – and its implications for Australia – can’t be ignored.
In contrast to the doom and gloom, sturm und drang of the Trump Administration, I have been rejoicing in the wonderful reminders of the Obama Administration that have come with the opening of the Obama Library in Chicago on 19 June.
If you need a reminder of that time of audacity and hope, you can access Barack Obama’s speech at the opening here.
And I found this insightful essay by Ta-Nehisi Coates, My President Was Black. A history of the first African American White House and of what came next, on what it meant for African Americans to have a Black president and the consequences of this momentous change.
Coates writes about how special Obama’s election to the presidency was for African Americans, and how perhaps it was only possible because Obama, through his mother and his grandparents who helped raise him, had both Black and White links, and that his embrace of blackness was facilitated, not impeded, by these White people. His Indonesian links are also important.
He quotes Obama’s own words: Obama saw the possibilities of life in the United States as “the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too”.
He writes: “Obama was born into a country where laws barring his very conception – let alone his ascendancy to the presidency – had long stood in force. A black president would always be a contradiction for a government that, throughout most of its history, had oppressed black people. The attempt to resolve this contradiction through Obama – a black man with deep roots in the white world – was remarkable. The price it exacted, incredible. The world it gave way to, unthinkable.”
The “unthinkable” here is the election of Trump as president in 2016 and what has followed since.
Ebola updates
The latest available reports on Ebola are very worrying. While things seem to be under control in Uganda, with 20 confirmed cases and two confirmed deaths as of 18 June and only one new case since 8 June, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) the number of cases continues to grow.
On 20 June, DRC reported 1003 confirmed cases and 254 confirmed deaths. This is an increase of 125 cases and 52 deaths since 16 June. The follow-up of known cases has now risen to 71 percent.
The World Health Organization Director-General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has said he is profoundly concerned about the Ebola outbreak and the immense operational challenges and gaps in resources that responders are facing.
A key problem is that some community leaders believe there are more pressing problems than Ebola – warring factions, hundreds of thousands of displaced people, widespread hunger, and a multitude of diseases that kill more people than Ebola. They feel the rest of the world only cares because it’s afraid Ebola will spread beyond the DRC’s borders.
And they are largely correct.
Nevertheless, the current outbreak could be the worst on record and it will only be contained if the rest of the world has the will and the resources to help do this.
The Africa Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) has received only about ten percent of the US$910 million pledged to help fight the outbreak.
A report released by Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in early June cited Trump Administration cuts to aid and global health as contributing factors to the outbreak.
The Acting Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Dr Jay Bhattacharya, has denied that the Trump Administration’s cuts to foreign aid have negatively impacted the global response to the Ebola outbreak.
There is some good news with the announcement on 18 June that the CDC will release US$107 million in emergency funding to strengthen its domestic and international response to the Ebola outbreak.
It’s unclear how much of this will go to resources on the ground in DRC and Uganda.
It was disappointing that the recent G7 meeting did little beyond a request for a “strong and coordinated response to address the health security risks” posed by the outbreak and praising the existing American and European Union programs.
They called on ” other countries and partners beyond the G7 to dedicate resources to tackling this global threat through the means they deem most appropriate.”
The European Commission has announced it is providing €493 million (about US$580 million) in emergency aid, vaccines, treatment and health security.
Investment in global health is essential
New vaccines are always needed. The absence of proven vaccines to address the current outbreaks of hantavirus and Ebola virus disease, along with the withdrawal of US support for vaccine research (specifically for mRNA vaccines which can be developed quickly), underscores the essential role of organisations like the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI).
On June 1, 2026, CEPI announced it would invest up to US$61·8 million to rapidly advance testing and production of three vaccine candidates against Bundibugyo Ebola virus.
Then, on 12 June, there was an announcement from the US State Department that “working with Congress, it intends to provide $50 million to the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) to develop medical countermeasures for the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola that is responsible for the current outbreak in the DRC”.
“This funding would support laboratory studies and clinical trials using ethically proven methods, and manufacturing for Bundibugyo medical countermeasure candidates,” the statement said.
There’s a lot of qualifiers there: “working with Congress” (I assume this means Congress will have to enact legislation and determine where these funds will come from); “intends to provide [US]$50 million” (doesn’t sound like a strong commitment); and why was the requirement for “ethically proven methods” specifically spelled out (does this relate to the “unethical” vaccine trial in Guinea-Bissau that Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F Kennedy Jr sought to establish as the “prototype” for vaccine studies)?
This may be part of a rebuke (on several fronts) by Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, of Kennedy’s involvement in matters of global health.
State Department to control US spending on global health
To follow up on that last sentence… In early June, Rubio indicated during testimony to Congress that the United States may (note the qualifier!) resume its funding of GAVI that Kennedy pulled last year, with unfounded accusations that GAVI “ignores the science” when it comes to vaccine safety.
This is seen by many as part of a broader effort by the State Department to reclaim control of global health from the Department of Health and Human Services.
GAVI’s operations have been constrained by the reduced budget which has affected vaccine stockpiles for cholera and expanding access to malaria vaccines in Africa.
A new plan from the State Department, to go into effect on 1 October, would sideline the CDC’s experts on global health and lead to the closure of about a third of its 60 overseas offices within the next three years.
You can read more about what this new approach will mean for global health here in The New York Times.
Huge return on investment in WHO global vaccine program
At a time when international bodies that work to safeguard global health like the WHO, GAVI, and CEPI are experiencing significant budget and funding rollbacks from high-income donor nations, an economic analysis published in The Lancet Global Health reveals the importance of the WHO’s Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI).
Over its 50-year history, EPI has cost US$937 billion but has generated a massive $16.06 in economic benefits for every $1 invested.
Key findings of the analysis include:
- EPI has saved an estimated 154 million lives globally, the vast majority being children under five years old.
- Universal access to routine vaccines accounts for 40 percent of the global reduction in infant mortality over the last 50 years.
- Immunisation against measles provided the highest return on investment, generating $73.97 in economic benefits for every $1 spent and preventing over 93,000 deaths.
- The return on investment was highest in low-income countries ($23.63 returned per $1 invested) compared to high-income countries ($14.80 returned per $1 invested).
Funding cuts threaten to reverse years of gains in HIV/AIDS response
A report just out from UN agency for HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) finds that external funding cuts and a backlash against human rights are threatening to reverse years of hard-won progress in the AIDS response.
Some key points from this report:
- Global development assistance fell by 23 percent in 2025
- HIV testing programmes did 22 percent less in 2025 than in 2024
- Funding for condoms has been cut by more than 90 percent
- PrEP (daily medicine to prevent HIV) uptake fell by 38 percent between 2024 and 2025
- HIV infections among women and girls in Sub-Saharan Africa are rising
- The AIDS-related death toll in 2025 was more than double global targets needed to end the pandemic.
There is some good news on this front: South Africa has just launched the twice-yearly Lenacapavir injection, which offers near total protection against HIV infection. The plan is to target one million people by 2027. You can read more here.
Assault on science just got worse
In the United States, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), headed by Russell Vought, a chief architect and co-author of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, has issued a 412-page regulatory proposal that would impose restrictions on the kinds of research that the federal government can fund, and give political appointees the final authority to deny federal funding for research deemed inconsistent with presidential priorities.
Peer review – evaluating research based on the scientific merits and strengths of the underlying evidence – would now be only “advisory”.
OMB says this approach is necessary because a “lack of transparency, accountability and proper oversight” in the way federal funds are currently dispersed has led to waste and the misuse of federal funds to “promote a ‘woke’ policy agenda”.
Unless the Congress acts (this seems unlikely), these new rules will go into effect some time after July 13. You can read more in these articles in The New York Times: here and here.
This has been described as the “murder of expertise” and as positioning Vought as the science czar of the Trump Administration.
An editorial in The New England Journal of Medicine further outlines the issues posed for science and researchers.
Not only would political appointees be able to make funding decisions and ignore the advice of independent scientists, they could stop funding midway through a promised grant period. The OMB would also institute new rules severely limiting interactions with overseas scientists.
And you can read the concerns of a minority scientist about political interference here in MedPage Today.
At the same time, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has released a “Request for Information” that proposes placing a cap on the number of NIH grants any individual researcher can receive.
There is some value in this: it could spread NIH dollars further, to more universities and younger researchers. But no-one trusts the Trump Administration to implement such a proposal fairly to achieve better equity. For example, will researchers from minority backgrounds be discriminated against?
And one further insult to scientists: earlier this month the Trump Administration acted to strip civil service protections from about 8,000 senior federal workers, many working as scientists in public health agencies. Their positions will now be “at-will”, meaning they can be fired without cause.
The list of people targeted by this policy has been called “weird and capricious”, with NIH targeted more aggressively than any other federal research agency.
Australian scientists also struggle
A recent article in The Australian written by two senior Australian scientists, Professor Mathias Francois from the University of Sydney and Professor Bob Graham, Vice-President of the Australian Academy of Science, outlines how professional survival for Australian scientists is a lottery, dependent on short-term, unpredictable funding.
They write: “When funding collapses, research teams disband. Postdoctoral scientists leave, taking years of expertise with them. Students lose stable training environments. Laboratories spend years rebuilding momentum after every funding shock. No serious business would repeatedly dismantle its highest-performing teams and expect greater productivity as a result. Yet biomedical research policy does exactly that.”
In March the Strategic Examination of Research and Development (SERD), Ambitious Australia, an independent panel’s report that provides recommendations to the Australian Government to reform Australia’s research and development system, was released by the Department of Industry, Science and Resources.
The review diagnoses Australia as an “R&D charity”. We excel at producing foundational research but frequently fail to capture its economic value, instead watching other nations commercialise Australian research and inventions.
Despite the fact that I try to follow these issues, I completely missed this report, and only became aware of its existence when I read an article in Pearls and Irritations from former Labor Minister for Science, Kim Carr.
Carr sees science – and effective communication about science – as a solution to the loss of confidence in Australia’s economy (which he attributes to the rise of anti-establishment politics ie One Nation).
He makes the point that too often science policy is treated as relevant only to universities, researchers and technology companies when in reality it is an essential part of a national economy that generates opportunity, productivity and hope.
“Science communication must do more than explain technical findings,” he said. “It must demonstrate how science provides solutions that improve people’s lives. It must connect innovation to jobs, industries and communities. It must offer practical hope at a time when many Australians are questioning whether progress is still possible.”
Tim Ayres, the Minister for Industry and Innovation and Minister for Science, says: “The Government will carefully consider the report and its recommendations and how it might respond.”
Ambitious Australia and the National Health and Medical Research Strategy 2026-2036 cover many of the same issues, but I was unable to find any cross-referencing or any indication that the two departments involved will implement these two reports in consultation. That seems like a lost opportunity.
Ivermectin back in the news
Ivermectin was developed as a veterinary drug to treat various animal nematode (roundworm) infections. Then it was discovered that it was a safe and effective treatment for human parasitic infections such as onchocerciasis (river blindness) and lymphatic filariasis (elephantiasis).
Bad science and misinterpretations of science led many to wrongly push ivermectin as a cure for COVID-19 infections.
The recent outbreaks of Hanta virus and Ebola virus have once again revived social media misinformation, conspiracy theories, and unverified claims pushing ivermectin as a cure.
Now the chair of the President’s Cancer Panel is a co-author on a new paper published in the journal Anticancer Research promoting ivermectin as a cancer treatment. The paper is backed by anti-vaccine organisations, including a supplement company known for selling unproven COVID-19 treatments, including ivermectin.
Independent experts said the study has a flawed design, methodology, and conclusion. You can read their criticisms – they are quite scathing here.
At the same time, there are reports that scammers hijacked the identity of a well-known Oregon cancer doctor to pitch ivermectin online.
Researchers say patients are navigating an increasingly crowded health information landscape, where advice from doctors and public health agencies competes with wellness entrepreneurs and, increasingly, AI-generated content.
Stoush over vaccine paper
Legal and public health experts have expressed concerns about HHS Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr’s inquiry into a medical journal’s decision to remove a study that purportedly suggested an increased incidence of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) within a few days following vaccination.
The study (the link here is to the paper on the NIH National Library of Medicine site) was published in 2021 by Neil Miller, a well-known vaccine sceptic.
The link to the study on the publisher’s site now shows a removal notice that says: “This article has been removed at the request of the Editor-in-Chief. Following post-publication concerns raised by readers regarding potential research errors and methodological flaws in this article, the journal initiated an investigation and contacted the author for clarification. The Editor-in-Chief determined that the author’s response did not satisfactorily address the concerns raised about this article.”
Kennedy has posted a letter on social media asking for an explanation of how the decision to remove the article was reached and who was involved in the decision. He also asked for more details about the implications for medical practices.
He claims this is about restoring trust in public health “by insisting on transparency, accountability, and open scientific inquiry – not by asking the public to accept decisions behind closed doors”.
You can read more about this issue here at MedPage Today.
There is also this story about the Trump Administration’s use of a paper that has been retracted: a 2010 paper that linked hepatitis B vaccines in infant boys to an increased risk of autism diagnosis has been retracted and another study by the same authors is under investigation.
The neonate paper was retracted because “concerns were raised regarding the methodology of the study and the reported conclusions”. You can read more here at MedPage Today.
The paper was included in a safety review of hepatitis B birth vaccination presented to the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) at its 4 December meeting, The next day the committee voted to drop the long-standing recommendation that every newborn receive a hepatitis B vaccine at birth.
A recent article in The Washington Post notes that Kennedy’s anti-vaccine agenda is still very active despite warnings this is not popular with voters and legal challenges from medical groups. However, his anti-vaccine activities are now largely shifted out of public view.
Alcohol report finally released
A study commissioned by the Biden Administration on the health effects of alcohol, which was held back by the Trump Administration, was finally published this month in a peer reviewed journal.
This study was apparently suppressed because it found that even low levels of drinking may increase disease risk. Alcohol industry trade groups claimed the scientists who conducted the study were biased against alcohol and that their conclusions have draconian implications.
Officials from the Department of Health and Human Services have tried to distance the department from this work by claiming (incorrectly) that the paper was “NOT commissioned by, NOR reviewed, approved, or cleared by” the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services.
The paper contains many of the same findings as a draft report made public in 2025.
The study recommends that Americans limit themselves to no more than one drink a day. It finds that moderate drinking increases the risk of early death and diseases such as cancer, heart disease and liver disease, and provides no net positive health benefit.
You can read more about the findings and their implications here in The Washington Post.
Several studies in recent years have reached similar conclusions on the dangers of moderate alcohol consumption, and polling has indicated that fewer Americans are drinking, and more now consider drinking even in moderation to be unhealthy.
However, when the Trump Administration released new dietary guidelines in January, these simply cautioned Americans to “consume less alcohol for better overall health” while omitting definitions of moderate drinking (previously defined as two drinks a day for men and one drink for women).
The findings of this study should be considered here in Australia. Current guidelines (set by the NHMRC in 2020) state: “To reduce the risk of harm from alcohol-related disease or injury for healthy men and women, drink no more than 10 standard drinks per week and no more than four standard drinks on any one day.”
Nutrition and chronic disease
When the Trump Administration released the latest nutrition guidelines in January, they were cited by Secretary of Health, Robert F Kennedy Jr, and Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, as an “historic reset of US nutrition policy” that put “real food back at the centre of health”.
I wrote about these guidelines in the 5 February edition of The Health Wrap and they were also covered by Charles Maskell-Knight in the 20 January edition of The Zap.
In the 6 January edition of The Health Wrap I wrote, somewhat critically, about the MAHA Make Our Children Healthy Again report.
Already, just six months later, we are seeing that both these policies, which at least theoretically should improve the health of American children, are hindered by Trump Administration policies that are cutting back on federal food and nutrition programs at a time when the ever-increasing cost-of-living is severely impacting the ability of families to buy food (and especially healthy food).
In March the USDA cut $1 billion from the Local Food for Schools and Local Food Purchase Assistance cooperative agreements that provide fresh food funding for schools and food banks, and the Trump Administration has added strict work and eligibility rules to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps program) that mean at least 776,000 children have lost access to this food assistance.
Now the Republicans in Congress are proposing cuts of US$141 million (a ten percent reduction) to the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) that lets low-income families buy fruits and vegetables, a benefit that reaches about 5.4 million young children and pregnant or postpartum women. You can read more here at MedPage Today.
Fruit and vegetable prices in the United States have risen 6.1 percent from April 2025 to April 2026 and a recent survey shows that many Americans feel that fresh food is beyond their financial reach.
The survey findings:
- 51 percent of respondents say their diet is less healthy than two to three years ago.
- 48 percent are eating more processed foods because they’re cheaper.
- 28 percent say healthy eating isn’t financially realistic for them.
The MAHA slogan “eat real food” rings hollow if few can afford it.
We may look on aghast at this, but these findings are echoed in the lives of many Australians.
Data from 2022 from the Australian Prevention Partnership Centre show that healthy diets cost 12-15 percent less than unhealthy diets but are out of reach for many families. Low socioeconomic households need 30-60 percent of their income to buy a healthy diet.
A study published in April this year looked at the diet cost and affordability in Queensland. It found that healthy diets remain unaffordable for many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander households, particularly in remote communities.
According to Foodbank Australia, about a third of Australian households are food insecure and children and young people make up about 26 percent of those seeking services from food organisations.
These findings highlight the need for sustained, coordinated policy action to improve food security for all Australians. See also this Croakey article: Transforming food policy: what will it take?
Abortion back on political agenda
It is shocking to see the extent to which abortion is back on the political agenda in Australia. There are concerns that the rise of One Nation will embolden anti-abortion activists to chip away at reproductive rights and seek US-style restrictions.
Much of the recent action has been in South Australia.
South Australian law permits abortions after 23 weeks, with the approval of two doctors, if the continuation of the pregnancy would involve “significant risk of injury to the physical or mental health” of the pregnant person.
In 2024, there were 4,725 terminations in South Australia; just 48, or one percent of these occurred after 23 weeks.
This past week a bill introduced by Family First MP, Sarah Game, that would restrict access to abortions after 25 weeks was passed by the upper house but defeated in the lower house by 36 votes to nine.
The matter was a conscience vote for Labor and Liberal MPs. The Greens voted against it, while One Nation supported it. Both Premier Peter Malinauskas and opposition leader Ashton Hurn voted in favour of the bill but did not speak to it.
One Nation has little in the way of policies on their website, but there is an emphatic statement that, in government, the party would “seek every opportunity to roll back brutal and extreme abortion law so that both unborn babies and pregnant women will have a level of legal and medical protection once again”, and specific details about how this would be delivered.
This is clearly Pauline Hanson’s position, as she outlined (albeit with some equivocation over abortions for medical reasons) during her speech last week to the National Press Club.
Earlier this month, relatively new One Nation recruit, Barnaby Joyce, called for tighter controls on abortions at a demonstration in Sydney. One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts says he will move to ban abortion entirely.
This looks increasingly like Trump’s Make America Great Again down under. And like the MAGA position, it does not reflect where the majority of voters stand on abortion.
Australia Institute polling (quoted in a report on South Australian opinions on abortion) shows that, nationally, 87 percent of Australians support access to abortion, and 62 percent support access to abortion without restriction. And the vast majority of One Nation voters are pro-choice.
There are no bans on abortion in Australia, and abortion is decriminalised across the country, but it isn’t a constitutional right and it isn’t protected in federal law.
The situation is well summarised by the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists: “RANZCOG’s position is unequivocal: abortion is healthcare. The decision to terminate a pregnancy is deeply personal and complex, requiring careful consideration of individual circumstances. These decisions must remain between a woman and her healthcare provider, not be dictated by political intervention.”
There is a continual need for vigilance to protect the current situation with respect to access to abortion here in Australia.
See also this Croakey article: One Nation’s anti-abortion turn shows MAGA’s creep in Australia.
Access to dental services
In case you missed it, make sure you read the recent article by my Croakey colleague, Charles Maskell-Knight, on the findings of the independent review of equity (or lack thereof) in the provision of cancer prostheses.
In particular, he explored the lack of action on the provision of dental prostheses that are essential for eating, speaking and quality of life of so many oral cancer patients.
I have done some work in this space alongside the Oral Cancer Team at the Chris O’Brien Lifehouse.
See these articles:
- This year sees an opportunity for long‐needed oral health reforms. Cancer patients, in particular, stand to benefit.
- The dental divide. Australian health policy doesn’t treat it that way, but dental care is a medical issue.
And more recently these media articles featuring Professor Jonathan Clark:
- Australians with oral cancer forced to drain super or remortgage homes to pay for dental prosthetics because of funding gap.
- Couple face devastating $40k shock after tumour surgery amid calls for the system to be fixed.
So far, there’s been a depressing lack of response from the Australian Government, despite all the evidence of need and cost-effectiveness.
And here’s one more piece of evidence about why dental care is an essential part of healthcare: brushing your teeth in hospital can reduce the chance of getting pneumonia.
A new study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases shows that brushing patients’ teeth can reduce the chance of getting non-ventilator hospital-acquired pneumonia, by 60 percent. You can read more here at The Conversation.
In case you missed it
Issue of the day – health care or healthcare?
How do you write it? Here’s how STAT makes the case for writing it as two words.
Is health care one word or two? At STAT, it’s two | STAT (you need to sign in to access this)
(For the record, Croakey’s style is healthcare.)
Baby food and allergies
An Australian study published in JAMA shows that, after the drastic change in guidance to no longer keep allergenic foods away from babies until they are toddlers, and instead introduce them by six months of age, the prevalence of egg allergy among children fell by more than 17 percent.
A separate study published in the journal Pediatrics last year found that rates of peanut allergy fell following the publication of updated guidelines.
Australia’s infant feeding guidelines for allergy prevention were updated in 2016 to recommend introducing egg and other food allergens in the first year of life to reduce the risk of food allergy. You can read more here from CNN.
Health reform evaluation models
An interesting paper, Health Reform Evaluation Models: Comparative Case Study of Australia, Denmark, Canada, England, Norway, and Sweden, was released last month.
The bottom line of this report: “Evaluation practice is strongest where data are mature and routine (financing, activity, access, utilisation), and weakest where reforms are most ambitious and complex (integration, people-centredness, equity, prevention, and long-term outcomes).”
It uses Australia’s National Health Reform Agreement (NHRA) mid-term review (released in 2023) as an example of an ambitious reform where components lack ‘a priori’ metrics. This evaluation found that the Australian Health Performance Framework was not fit to evaluate NHRA objectives because indicators remained siloed and overly hospital-activity focused.
An Interim Quantitative Performance Framework was developed to better understand and track performance against the NHRA objectives of efficiency, effectiveness, sustainability and equity.
I was unable to determine if this interim framework has been further developed/finalised for the 2026-2031 NHRA Addendum.
Advancing safety and quality
Patient safety remains one of the most pressing and persistent challenges in healthcare. Diagnostic errors, fragmented systems, and underreporting of patient safety events are key contributors.
A paper published in NEJM Catalyst in April summarises insights from the Advancing Patient Safety and Healthcare Quality symposium in May 2025 and highlights strategies to address the gaps.
Australia’s prison revolving door costs lives
An article in Pearls and Irritations outlines how the revolving door of prison, compounded by the failure of justice, health and housing systems to support life after release, increases the risk of suicide, both in custody and beyond.
Deaths within a year of release are approximately ten times more numerous than deaths occurring in custody.
This is an issue affecting both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people, but because Aboriginal people are vastly over-represented in the prison population, they bear a disproportionate burden.
The authors point out that: “While the justice system treats imprisonment as an episodic event, families experience it as a continuous condition stretching across years and sometimes generations.”
They make the following recommendations:
- Governments should recognise suicide in custody’s afterlife as a distinct policy concern.
- Prevention must extend beyond prison gates through reduced justice system delays, stable housing, mental health and alcohol and drug treatment, peer support, Aboriginal-led healing services, and supervision that strengthens connection rather than compliance.
- Families carry much of the burden of reintegration and should be recognised and resourced as partners in prevention.
And conclude: “Most importantly, we must reduce the endless cycling between prison and community that leaves people exhausted, excluded and without hope.”
Ballet dancers and bananas
There was a fascinating story in The Sydney Morning Herald on how the Australian Ballet’s dancers are preparing for the extreme physical demands of their coming performance of Copland Dance Episodes.
It outlines the relatively new approach of applying sports science to ballet – the Australian Ballet has a team of health specialists involved in every aspect of a dancer’s physical and mental health and athletic development.
Where once there were physiotherapists concerned about fixing injuries, the health team is now concerned with prevention and ensuring dancers are performing at their full capacity.
The team keeps track of the variables that affect a dancer’s ability to reach that capacity: their nutrition, sleeping patterns, heart rates and their cross-training and how much time they spend in classes.
El Niño and the Iran war may spark a hunger crisis
Meteorologists have declared the arrival of an El Niño event that is expected to drive soaring temperatures and more extreme weather. This will imperil agriculture and life in general in some of the world’s most vulnerable regions.
High fuel and fertiliser prices due to the Iran war will compound this situation and experts are concerned about severe food shortages around the world this year.
A newly released outlook from the US State Department’s Famine Early Warning Systems Network forecasts that 115 million to 125 million people in the world’s 26 most vulnerable countries will require urgent food assistance by December.
(Sadly, although the United States put out this report, I doubt we will see any American Government contributions towards addressing this issue.)
You can read more here in The Washington Post.
How Aboriginal people fought smallpox
Newly published research and an article in The Conversation outline how Aboriginal nations responded to the smallpox epidemic that spread across southeastern Australia from 1830 to 1832.
Strategies included recognition of the need for isolation and the movement of people away from the disease and population centres. There were also attempts at treatment.
And, interestingly, the Wiradjuri, Gomeroi and Wailwan peoples readily accepted vaccination, offered by an army doctor.
Best of Croakey
Two recent articles in Croakey outline why housing is an important determinant of health and why governments should pay more attention to this.
- National housing policy needs much more work
- Housing is health infrastructure – it’s time we started talking about it that way
The good news story
Keeping fit as the birthdays accumulate is one of my key interests. So I love this story about a 92-year old Italian woman who is as fit as someone half her age and who is the holder of multiple sprinting world records.
She – and her muscles – are also the object of considerable scientific study. There are two published studies here and here.
Croakey thanks and acknowledges Dr Lesley Russell for providing this column as a probono service to our readers. Follow her on Twitter at @LRussellWolpe.
Previous editions of The Health Wrap can be read here.
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