Intouch Public Health

Adjunct Professor Terry Slevin, PHAA

Last night, Dr Mike Freelander, paediatrician and member for the south western Sydney seat of Macarthur, handed down the House of Representatives Health Committees Report on “The state of Diabetes Mellitus in Australia 2024”.

The Report shows that five per cent of the population live with diabetes, and that the number of Australians diagnosed is expected to rise, in what’s being called a ‘diabetes epidemic’.

The aim of the Committee’s report is to improve health outcomes for people with diabetes, as well as focus on prevention by addressing risk factors such as obesity.

In Dr Freelander’s own words:

“The primary aim must be prevention and it is very important that every strategy possible is used as part of a comprehensive preventative response.

This will require an all of Government approach involving local, State and Federal Governments.

Some of the policy recommendations will include improving access to healthy foods, using a reformulation levy to decrease consumption of sugar sweetened beverages, limiting advertising of high sugar and highly processed foods, particularly to children, better urban planning to encourage increased physical activity and improved educational resources for our children about the dangers of diabetes.

It is of concern that the marketing of highly processed food products for very young infants, e.g. pureed foods in sachets and toddler formulas, is rampant. Food labelling is opaque, unintelligible to most people without consideration of the long-term consequences.

Urgent reform is required in advertising, marketing and community awareness. Dietary guidelines need to change.

Self-regulation by the food industry and the ‘fast food’ industry has not and will not work, and our children are suffering the consequences.”

The public health community enthusiastically endorses these sentiments and the recommendations proposed to address these issues.

The Committee made 23 recommendations to tackle diabetes and obesity. Among others, they recommend:

• The Australian Government undertakes a comprehensive economic analysis of the direct and indirect cost of all forms of diabetes mellitus in Australia.
• The National Health and Medical Research Council expedites a review of the Australian Dietary Guidelines, and ensures that the revised guidelines include adequate information for Australians living with diabetes.
• The Australian Government implements food labelling reforms targeting added sugar to allow consumers to clearly identify the content of added sugar from front-of-pack labelling. This food labelling initiative should be separate from the information regarding added sugar potentially being included in the Nutrition Information Panel.
• The Australian Government implements a levy on sugar-sweetened beverages, such that the price is modelled on international best practice and the anticipated improvement of health outcomes. The levy should be graduated according to the sugar content.
• The Australian Government considers regulating the marketing and advertising of unhealthy food to children, and that this regulation should: focus on children defined as those aged 16 and under; be applied to television, radio, gaming and online; use definition of unhealthy food that has been independently developed.
• The Australian Government provides its response to the Australian Food Story: Feeding the Nation and Beyond report and considers a dedicated resource within the Department of Health and Aged Care to support access to healthy food to all Australian communities.
• The Australian Government, in consultation and cooperation with state and territory governments, develops a best practice framework to tackle the problem of obesogenic environments, including through better urban planning and the development of physical activity initiatives and supports efforts to increase access to regular exercise in schools and neighbourhoods as a matter of urgency.

The House Committee’s report is hugely important and timely. Earlier this week, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare released its “annual health report”, which highlighted that overweight and obesity are responsible for 8.4% of the total burden of disease in Australia, second only to tobacco (8.6%).

“Dietary risk” follows, representing 5.4% of the total disease burden.

Obesity is a major factor in the rise of type-two diabetes, as well as many of the other chronic diseases driving demand for hospital services and harming our health, productivity and quality of life.

Obesity contributes to some of the most common causes of death and disability, including coronary heart disease, cancer and dementia.

With the steady fall in smoking prevalence over the years, it is only a matter of time before obesity becomes the number one risk factor driving chronic disease trends.

An enormous effort went into the production of this House Health Committee report, and the result was excellent.

More than 500 submissions were received, and fifteen days of hearings held around the country.  PHAA is proud to have made a detailed submission and presented to a witness hearing.

What happens next?

This report can and should be a launch point for genuine action on tackling Australia’s weight.

PHAA will be working with the offices of both Health Minister Mark Butler and Assistant Minister Ged Kearney, and Departments of Health federally and in the states and territories, to push implementation of these important public health reforms.

We will argue for a comprehensive package of measures of similar scope and impact as the recent work on controlling tobacco and vaping.

We will work with partners across the spectrum to turn these recommendations into a reality, to improve the health and lives of people in Australia.

While it is far from the only item on the PHAA agenda, preventing obesity and chronic disease will be a major focus for our organisation in the coming years.

Read our media release here.

Adj Prof Terry Slevin is the CEO of the Public Health Association of Australia