December report for Epidemiology for Policy and Practice

2 December 2020

Keynote and invited presentations

Jason Agostino presented a webinar alongside Catherine Chamberlain for the Guidelines International Network on First nations-led guideline development - supporting prevention and management COVID-19 in primary healthcare

RSPH workshops and seminars

An Acknowledgement of Country session with Dan Bourchier facilitating will be held 11.30 to 12.15pm Wednesday 9th December, just prior to the Christmas picnic lunch, venue is Kambri Cultural Centre.  Eventbrite registration flyer will be sent out early this week.

Awards

Kai Hodgkin has been nominated for an ANU Excellence in Medical Education Award. Awards are announced on the 10 of December.

Associate Professor Kamalini Lokuge was awarded a Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Impact and Engagement 2020 for her work on COVID-19.

Outreach and engagement
Emily Banks and the e-Cigarettes team made a submission to the TGA interim decision made under regulation 42ZCZN of the Therapeutic Goods Regulations 1990 regarding amendment to the current Poisons Standard.

Emily Banks and the e-Cigarettes team made a submission to Senate Committee on Tobacco Harm Reduction on 5 November (Submission 157). Emily Banks presented to the Senate Select Committee on Friday 13 November.

The CVD implementation team will be presenting their engagement strategy and discussing racism and clinical algorithms at the upcoming Thiitu Tharrmay reference group meeting.

The CVD implementation team have begun speaking with data custodians to identify services with high coverage of chronic disease screening and follow up. Data custodians have included NPS Medicinewise, the Data for Decisions group in Melbourne and ATLAS Study network in South Australia. Ethics applications for this phase of work are also in progress.

The CVD Implementation team is also working with investigators based at the University of Sydney to establish Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander engagement and input for the development of shared decision making tools

Other stakeholders that the CVD Implementation team continues to work with include the Health Services Data Advisory Committee regarding nKPIs, the Heart Foundation, and the Australian Bureau of Statistics regarding the next round of national health surveys.

Media releases/interest                              

The final report for the FaCtS Study is being printed and is set for release for 10 December. Dr Jill Guthrie, the Project Leader, is currently in discussions with DSS and ANU Media about the format and timing of a media release around this date.

Students

Makayla-May Brinckley was successful in obtaining a five year Indigenous Postdoctoral Level A position within the Mayi Kuwayu Study team. This position is being funded through our successful philanthropic grant from the Ian Potter Foundation.

Papers accepted/published:

Banks E, Korda R, Joshy G, Paige L, Welsh J, Martin M. Comparison of cardiovascular disease risk factors, assessment and management in men and women, including consideration of absolute risk: A nationally representative cross-sectional study. BMJ Open. (Accepted 13 November 2020).

Thurber K, Banks E, Joshy G, Soga K, Marmo A, Benton G, White S. L., Eades S, Maddox R, Calma T, Lovett R. Tobacco smoking and mortality among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults in Australia.  International Journal of Epidemiology (Accepted 27 November 2020).

Welsh J, Banks E, Joshy G, Butterworth P, Strazdins L, Korda, RJ Psychological distress and incident cardiovascular disease: Evidence on the direct association using a longer-term measure of distress. BMJ Open 2020. (Accepted 13 Nov 2020). 

Erlangsen A, Banks E, Joshy G, Calear A, Welsh J, Batterham P, Salvador-Carulla L. Physical, mental, and social wellbeing and their association with death by suicide and self-harm in older adults: a community-based cohort study. International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry. 2020.
https://doi.org/10.1002/gps.5463   (Published 9 Nov 2020) 

Joshy G, Thandrayen J, Koczwara B, Butow P, Laidsaar-Powell R, Rankin N, Canfell K, Stubbs J, Grogan P, Bailey L, Yazidjoglou A, Banks E. Disability, psychological distress and quality of life in relation to cancer diagnosis and cancer type: population-based Australian study of 22,505 cancer survivors and 244,000 people without cancer. BMC Med (Published 1 Dec 2020). 

Progress on research projects
On 14 November 2020, Ben O'Neill released a new R package ts.extend on the official repository for R packages.  The package includes probability functions for ARMA time-series models (a popular type of time-series model) and also includes functions for the analysis and detection of periodic signals in time-series data.  There are a two papers in the works setting out statistical theory relating to the functions in the package.