Down the bottom of the world in NZ, much has been done in tobacco control research. This presentation will canvass two unique and world-leading areas. First, the NZ census has included smoking questions in 1981, 1996 and 2006. Linkage of these censuses to national mortality data has allowed determination of mortality rates for never smokers in a smokefree household compared to households with at least one other adult smoker. We found approximately 15% increases in mortality among 2 million person years of relevant exposure (BMJ 2004; Am J Epi 2007). This presentation will update these analyses to the 2006-11 linked census-mortality cohort, for various restrictions (e.g. marital status) and diseases. Second, NZ has had a strong focus on tobacco endgame strategies. One research contribution to this endgame strategy is simulation modelling to quantify the health adjusted life year gains (and averted health expenditure) for different strategies (e.g. smokefree generation, e cigarettes) using proportional multistate lifetable modelling.
Tony Blakely is an epidemiologist, who strays into computer science and economics. From 1998 to 2019 he was at the University of Otago, Wellington, leading heath inequalities, tobacco and cost effectiveness research. Since 2019, he is at the University of Melbourne, scaling up research to quantify the health gains and cost impacts of population interventions, using next-generation simulation modelling in collaboration with the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (home of the Global Burden of Disease).
