Transcript: Dr Andrew Pesce doorstop on Preventative Health Taskforce

Subjects: Media reports of Preventative Health Taskforce report, cash payments for nurses.

DR PESCE: Thanks for coming. Some elements of the primary health prevention Taskforce report are starting to be released to the public. Doctors see the downstream effects of poor health caused by obesity, smoking, and excess alcohol in their practices and in the hospitals every day.

It's vitally important that, as a community, we do everything we can to improve the health of our community, not just through treating illness, but through preventing it in the first place.

The AMA has always had a strong policy on decreasing smoking through campaigns, to decreasing advertising, increasing the prices of cigarettes, and also has always had a policy on targeted advertising to make sure that poor health choices aren't promoted in our media.

It's very important that this continues, and the Government needs to look at ways in which it can really improve the health of the community by preventing obesity, smoking and inappropriate alcohol consumption and promoting healthy diet choices all through Australians’ lives.

QUESTION: So you're saying that there's something new in the Taskforce's findings?

DR PESCE: There is something - there are some radical suggestions in the Taskforce findings. They're talking about the Government subsidising good food choices for people through food vouchers for low-income earners, and possibly subsidising the cost of nutritious foods in remote and rural communities where the costs are prohibitively expensive.

It's a lot cheaper to buy a packet of chips in Arnhem Land than an apple, so sometimes the Government has to be proactive in making sure it makes good food choices possible for all Australians.

There's also recommendations regarding the incorporation of food manufacturers into the strategy.

Too often foods that are marketed and easily available to the population have less than healthy levels of salts, fat, carbohydrates.

We need the community to have information to make sure they know they can make healthy choices easily, and sometimes you may actually need to send price signals to make sure that those health choices are reinforced.

QUESTION: This radical suggestion, to use your own words, do you know whether or not they've been trialled in other countries, and if so, if they've been a success?

DR PESCE: Look, we know that intervening in terms of smoking and alcohol, we can improve health outcomes.

There isn't a huge amount of evidence on this yet in terms of the proportions of unhealthy foods in the diet.

There is some evidence that restricting advertising of junk foods to children during children prime time viewing does lead a measurable decrease in weight gain. So there is evidence that this can work.

QUESTION: Does the anecdotal evidence overseas, for example, from these sorts of measures to subsidise the

DR PESCE: Well I think that unfortunately they are in a business with a product which is known for poor health outcomes for a lot of Australians.

I'm sorry, but as a doctor I have to focus on the patients that I see every day: the poor health outcomes that people are losing limbs because of gangrene, the people who are losing lungs to lung cancer and then die from heart disease and stroke.

I think we have to make good public policy decisions which are going to improve the health of our nation, and everyone has to bear a price and the burden of that.

QUESTION: What's your reaction to the story in The Australian today that there hasn't been a widespread take-up of the cash incentives to attract nurses back into hospitals?

DR PESCE: Well I think this demonstrates the point. It doesn't just ... good health policy doesn't come out of the good idea in just throwing some money around. 

Good health policy comes from engaging with the people who are involved, finding what it's going to take to actually really work, take our advice and talk to us.

ENDS

27 August 2009

CONTACT: 
John Flannery  02 6270 5477 / 0419 494 761
Peter Jean  02 6270 5464 / 0427 209 753