Key highlights from the Australian Public Health Conference, 17 to 19 September, 2024, Perth

The Public Health Association of Australia (PHAA) hosted the multidisciplinary Australian Public Health Conference (APHC) from 17 to 19 September, 2024, in Perth. This year’s theme, ‘High value public health in a complex world’, focused on promoting and investing in public health across a broad range of public health issues, including nutrition, physical activity, smoking and vaping cessation, equity, Indigenous health. For a detailed overview of the program, see here.

CRE EPOCH-Translate PhD candidate, Ms Heilok Cheng, presented her research on bed-time bottle feeding as a risk factor for tooth decay and overweight in 3-4 year old preschoolers from the Healthy Smiles Healthy Kids birth cohort. Her study found that children who were bottle fed to sleep at 2 years old had a higher risk of tooth decay and affected by overweight by ages 3-4 years old. This research highlights the need to support parents and families in adopting healthy sleep, settling and feeding practices during early childhood, particularly to stopping bottle use by 12 months age.

These findings will guide future research aimed at developing strategies to promote best practices for formula and bottle feeding as part of a comprehensive approach to promote optimal growth and oral health.

Other notable presentations and plenary talks included:

• Strategies on translating research into policy and practice. Professor Gina Trapp from Edith Cowan University talked about the four ‘ingredients’ to turn research into policy, using examples of her work in creating healthy food and physical activity environments:
  • Assembling multidisciplinary collaborative research, such as experts in nutrition, public health, geography, social science, law and urban planning
  • Establishing strategic partnerships with policy makers, to ensure research is always practically applied and tailored to address policy gaps – such as the WA Food Atlas to support multisector collaboration for food environments
  • Undertaking research for community need and preferences – with an example of the Amped Up! trial in Bridgetown, WA, co-designed with community members, to restrict energy drink sales to young people
  • Forming effective coalitions, such as research that led to the Food Fight campaign by Cancer Council Victoria to restrict unhealthy food and drink advertising to children
• Speakers in occupational hygiene, cancer epidemiology and trade union, for workplace health and regulation discussed a coalition formed by professional bodies across union, industry and health to advocate for a ban on engineered stone in Australia. This initiative arises from concerns about the risks of preventable diseases linked to silica dust exposure. By bringing together experts from different disciplines, the coalition highlighted the science behind the occupational hygiene practices to protect against silica dust, the population health gains in preventing cancer cases by avoiding exposure to silica dust, and the actions taken by trade union to turn public health science into a push to make workplaces safer.

Advice on using trade union messages to support public health messages included:

• • The right to work in healthy and safe workplaces
  • Forming coalitions to resist the industries that are self-interested in profit and uninterested in community or worker health
  • Focus on community support for change
  • Using strengths-based messages, such as strong safety nets for workers supporting the success of businesses

• The development of the SCANNER system at Deakin University, which uses deep learning and AI to detect and classify junk food, gambling, alcohol, tobacco and vaping marketing from screen recordings. Early findings from the DIGITAL-YOUTH study highlight that children and adolescents can see a concerning number of marketing every day, including marketing that encourages engagement with gambling and alcohol industries. Being targeted with marketing of harmful products increases the use of these products, which have life-long consequences for health. The SCANNER system is the first application of AI in digital marketing regulation and can establish a system for monitoring accountability and compliance in marketing regulation.With the provision of a training data set and required resources, the SCANNER system could be trained to identify infant and toddler marketing, much like the VIVID AI program to detect WHO Code violations on digital platforms.

• The design and real-world assessment of the Little Aussie Bugs books from Edith Cowan University, which supports health literacy of children in early childhood education and care settings through the use of books for 2-3 year age range. In addition to giving out a set of four books to early childhood educators, educators were supported with professional development training, downloadable resources and E-books. Books: great for health, language development, literacy and socio-emotional engagement! This short course for early childhood educators is available through Edith Cowan University.The Little Aussie Bugs books highlight the importance of working across sectors to improve child health. Early childhood educators who took part in using the Little Aussie  Bugs book provided feedback, such as children being more willing to try new foods as part of learning to like new foods!