Category: Health

Source: New Zealand Ministry of Health

The Public Health Surveillance Strategy 2025-2030 is designed to strengthen our public health surveillance system to better support increased life expectancy with quality of life for New Zealanders.

The strategy was a collaboration between the Public Health Agency with the wider Ministry, Health New Zealand, and ESR. Extensive consultation with the wider surveillance sector informed its development.

Public health surveillance is the collection and dissemination of health or health-related information to plan and implement initiatives to help keep people healthy, and protect them from new health threats, such as disease outbreaks.

Sources of information for public health surveillance can be drawn from across the health system, government, and wider society. They include laboratory test results, mortality data, wastewater testing, global health data, mosquito surveillance, health surveys, clinician reporting, and even retail spending. 

The health system has an obligation to protect and improve the health of New Zealanders. This cannot be achieved without the well-coordinated and systematic collection of public health information. The strategy outlines an approach to public health surveillance based on ensuring the confidentiality, privacy and protection of people’s personal health data. It supports using information only to support protecting and improving the health of New Zealanders.

The strategy identifies four strategic directions. These include:

• strengthening governance, leadership, and coordination
• focussing on the things that matter
• responding to emerging challenges and opportunities
• continuously improving.

Source: New Zealand Ministry of Health

Summary

Fatigue, poor concentration/memory, shortness of breath and loss of taste or smell are the most prevalent symptoms following COVID-19 infection in adults when compared with non-COVID-19 infected controls (either population controls or those with infective symptoms but testing negative for COVID-19). Children and adolescents present with similar symptoms to adults, but may also include cough and headache. 

Given the heterogeneity of evidence to date, and in the absence of high-powered, robust studies, a meta-analysis could not be undertaken to accurately determine the overall prevalence of one or more of these symptoms three or more months after infection with COVID-19. 

While a precise measurement of symptom prevalence remains a challenge, the knowledge that a narrower subset of symptoms can be confidently attributed to infection with COVID-19 has important implications. In the absence of definitive diagnostic criteria, this subset can inform a refined, iterative definition of long COVID-19, both internationally and in New Zealand. 

The finding that four symptoms appear to be attributable to infection with COVID-19 will enable focused attention on these symptoms. This will facilitate accurate surveillance and targeted resourcing for clinical and wellbeing support where it is most needed.

Source: New Zealand Ministry of Health

Tatau Kahukura: Māori Health Chart Book 2024 provides reliable and easy-to-access statistical information on key Māori health indicators.

Tatau Kahukura has been designed as a tool for all parts of the health sector. The results highlight areas the health system needs to focus on to improve the health of Māori and reduce Māori health inequities.

It will be of value to the health and disability sector in policy, research, and service design. This information is also helpful for students and the wider community in gaining a better understanding of Māori health.

Tatau Kahukura also promotes Māori health analytical procedures and provides a reference point for analysts conducting Māori health focused analysis. Many of the more regular reporting, for example Whakamaua reporting, rely on methods specified in Tatau Kahukura.

Key findings

Tatau Kahukura shows that Māori have higher rates than non-Māori for many health conditions and chronic diseases, including cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and asthma.

Findings include:

• Māori adults were almost twice as likely as non-Māori adults to have experienced any type of racial discrimination.
• Māori boys and girls (aged 0 to 14 years) and Māori adults (aged 15 years and over) had daily vaping rates that were around three times higher than their non-Māori counterparts.
• Ischaemic heart disease rates were twice as high for Māori adults compared to non-Māori adults.
• Māori females had a lung cancer registration rate over three times that of non-Māori females.
• Māori males and females were around one and a half times more likely than non-Māori males and females to have diabetes.
• Māori aged 5–34 years were more than twice as likely as non-Māori in the same age group to have been hospitalised for asthma.

How to access Tatau Kahukura

You can access Tatau Kahukura online, or download the document versions.

Tatau Kahukura: Online version

Source: New Zealand Ministry of Health

This is the fourth annual report on abortion service the Ministry of Health – Manatū Hauora has published.

As the steward of the health system, the Ministry of Health plays an important role in ensuring public safety and quality through our regulatory functions and activities and then monitoring them – including for abortion services.

The Abortion Services Aotearoa New Zealand: Annual Report provides a snapshot of abortion services for the 2023 calendar year. The findings in this report highlight continued improvements following both the 2020 law reform and the 2022 health reforms.  

Key achievements include increased accessibility through continued growth of the abortion workforce, and a decrease in average drive-time to in-person services. Access to early medical abortions through telehealth services have also increased.

Along with greater access, people from all ethnic backgrounds are accessing abortions earlier in their pregnancy. These reductions in barriers to access, and earlier terminations, are associated with safer outcomes.

While these improvements signal better access and outcomes for individuals seeking abortion care in Aotearoa New Zealand, barriers continue to disproportionally impact some groups, including Māori and those living in rural areas. Eliminating health disparities is an ongoing focus for the Ministry of Health.

Source: New Zealand Ministry of Health

The Ministry of Health – Manatū Hauora has developed a snapshot report to monitor and report on the progress the health system made on delivery against the Interim Government Policy Statement on Health 2022–2024 (iGPS). The iGPS set the Government’s priorities and expectations for the health system for 2022–2024 as well as the framework for the interim New Zealand Health Plan | Te Pae Tata 2022 (interim NZ Health Plan).

This snapshot report presents national results for iGPS measures from the second and final year (2023/24) of the two-year interim period.

Source: New Zealand Ministry of Health

Summary

Centres of Excellence (CoEs) are often established to fill a gap in existing services for a specific condition, such as for a rare disorder or for conditions where high levels of inter-disciplinary expertise and integration of multi-disciplinary care are required to ensure optimum treatment regimes. Establishing a CoE requires strategic planning; the literature provides guidance on the essential foundations and operational elements for sustainability and meeting continuing standards of excellence.

Evidence examining the effectiveness of ‘centre of excellence’ or ‘co-ordination hub’ approaches for the management of specialised health or disability needs is limited with research still emerging. There was some evidence that well managed CoEs are able to deliver better health outcomes for complex conditions.

In Aotearoa New Zealand there are some comparable specialised services.  Of the five services analysed there were alignments to the CoE as a concept. Community leadership, strong public funding partnerships and the ability to quickly respond to health and disability system changes were a visible strength for all of these services.

Source: New Zealand Ministry of Health

Summary

This Evidence Brief was completed in November 2023. It includes an examination of the provision of healthcare, diagnosis, access to treatment, cost, quality of life and the role of research for rare disorders. There is a large body of international research and evidence dedicated to rare disorders but very little that is Aotearoa New Zealand-specific.

Rare disorders are a highly varied group of conditions that are referred to as a whole due to the low prevalence of each disorder. Rare disorders tend to be chronic multi-system disorders which can have a substantial impact on a person’s wellbeing. The complex and unique problems faced by people with rare disorders are experienced in similar ways across the globe, and there is substantial international, often community-driven, work occurring to address these problems.

In New Zealand, people with a rare disorder may access services through their local health, disability and social support service providers, generally through a referral from their general practitioner. Organised support for different disorders is largely provided through community-based organisations, many of which are affiliated with the Rare Disorders NZ consortium. While not all rare disorders result in a disability, many do.

People with these rare disorders are likely to be included within the wider population cohort of disabled people. Barriers to accessing health care are a significant issue in some regions, particularly for rural and poorly served lower socioeconomic communities. 

High level recommendations from the evidence were:

1. Te Tiriti o Waitangi and equity need to be at the centre of a strategy
2. specific diagnosis and treatment pathways need to be developed for people with a rare disorder
3. a nationally coordinated approach to research focused on rare disorders is required
4. dedicated infrastructure development is required to meet the specialised needs of rare disorders. These include registries, biobanks and genomic databases.