Australian public health experts have hailed 2024 as the best year in at least a decade for advancing key health issues, including new vaping laws.
The country’s peak public health body has published a summary of achievements last year, saying they would help people to be healthier and live longer.
Public Health Association of Australian CEO, Adjunct Professor Terry Slevin, said the good news included the burden of disease falling by 10% over the past 20 years, according to recent data from the AIHW Australian Burden of Disease Study 2024.
He also commended the Federal Government launching an interim Centre for Disease Control (CDC) and confirming its plan to legislate for the permanent body in 2025.
“This institutional change is far more than bureaucratic reorganisation,” he said. ‘The Australian CDC can be a vehicle for many public health initiatives, as the key adviser to Government and director of public health initiatives in communicable disease control, and hopefully in chronic disease prevention.
“We may well look back on 2024 as the year that the gears shifted into place for public and preventive health within Australia’s federal government. But implementation of the CDC will require significant investment for health protection, disease prevention, community health and wellbeing.”
Professor Slevin said 2024 also saw the release of the COVID-19 Response Inquiry report, which helped firm up the push to create the Australian CDC by giving a clear-eyed analysis of Australia’s needs to prevent and prepare for health emergencies.
He said national control of the world’s biggest killer – nicotine products – had also taken major steps forward in 2024.
Following a revision of federal tobacco control laws in late 2023, almost all state and territory jurisdictions had been revising their tobacco control legislation, resulting in some of the biggest shifts since the early 1990s.
“At the centre of these changes was a world leading federal law reform to control retail sales, importation and manufacture of vaping products across Australia,” Prof Slevin said.
“This new national regime also fed into the state and territory tobacco law reform efforts, ensuring a comprehensive nationwide approach to vaping regulation.
“Tobacco and other nicotine products have never been better regulated by law than they are at the end of 2024.”
Other notable public health successes were moves on health star ratings on food, a major inquiry into diabetes in Australia, and progress into a national climate and health strategy.
“From 2025 onward, the policy challenges with the greatest potential to improve our lives relate to food and other consumption behaviours,” Prof Slevin said.
“Reducing the marketing of unhealthy food, sensible and honest food labelling, a health levy on sugary drinks and funding programs that will help drive down rates of overweight and obesity are all achievable.”