Effectiveness of Incentives for Smoking Cessation May 10, 2011
Posted by norm in Uncategorized.Tags: Public Health, tobacco
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Given the costs to the health care system of smoking (see previous posts here and here), it’s important to empirically examine the effectiveness of various anti-smoking measures. A recent systematic review on the effectiveness of financial incentives in smoking cessation found that incentives generally don’t increase cessation rates over the long term. It remains unclear however whether incentives get more people to try to quit. If so, incentives would be effective in lowering the smoking rate across the whole population.
Smoking Increases Risk of Alzheimer’s and Dementia October 28, 2010
Posted by norm in Uncategorized.Tags: alzheimer's, dementia, Public Health, tobacco
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And not a little either. Risks more than doubled. Yet another reason governments should be more aggressive at curbing tobacco use. (link)
40% of Cancer Cases Can be Prevented February 2, 2010
Posted by norm in Uncategorized.Tags: cancer, Public Health, tobacco
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The International Union Against Cancer (UICC, which I guess is for l’Union internationale contre le cancer) reports that preventing nine types of infection can drastically reduce cancer rates. Cervical and liver cancer, both caused by infections which can be prevented with vaccines, should be top priorities, the UICC says. Indeed, in Ontario kids get HPV and Hep B vaccines at school through a program run by public health.
“The experts said the risk of developing cancer could potentially be reduced by up to 40 percent if full immunization and prevention measures were deployed and combined with simple lifestyle changes like quitting smoking, eating healthily, limiting alcohol intake and reducing sun exposure.” Story
I think there should be a steep junk food tax, and no sales tax on exercise equipment.
Unfortunately Ontario and Quebec have to lowest tobacco taxes in Canada (source: OTRU). Part of the problem appears to be growth in contraband (i.e. not taxed) cigarettes in Ontario and Quebec. In a 2007 report, the OTRU states that 14% of the cigarettes smoked were purchased on First Nations reserves, thus avoiding taxation. There are other sources of contraband cigarettes, so 14% is an underestimation of tax avoidance problem. (see also: McLaughlin, CMAJ.) Politicians feel that if they were to raise cigarette taxes further, contraband cigarettes would have an even greater market penetration.
Teenagers especially need nutritional education, except that I doubt it will have much influence on them. The book tipping point by Malcolm Gladwell provides a series of illustrations of possible factors influencing the “contagion” of ideas and behaviour. It would be interesting to investigate the effectiveness of a healthy lifestyle campaign based on leveraging the factors highlighted in the tipping point.
BTW, Feb 4 is World Cancer Day.
