The current state and federal governments refuse to acknowledge the key role of harm reduction in providing safety and saving lives. Instead, they are forging ahead with their illogical and impossible pursuit of a drug-free society based on the old, heavy-handed law-and-order approach.

I don't know when I first became aware of the word epilepsy. Family mythology has me aged about four when it was noticed that I was taking "funny turns". But it's a word that defined me for many years; stalked me through all aspects of life, complicated the serious and the mundane.

What's the answer to our obesity crisis? Well, I have to admit we don't know. But we're going to spend this year looking for as many answers as we can find. Small ideas. Big ideas. Ideas that are already making a difference.

People have been aware of a purported link between mobile phones and brain cancer for some time now. The easy argument is that mobile phones have been around since 1988 and there's been no tidal wave of tumours, so 'case closed'. But not enough people had mobile phones in 1988 to make any assessment on population risk.

A 1998 World Health Assembly resolution targets trachoma for elimination as a public health problem by the year 2020. While this is ambitious, we are making headway, and we must continue to do more to eradicate this disease all over the world.

In a society where efficiency and quick delivery are prized, investing millions in cancer research can seem like it produces very poor returns, very slowly. So it's clear to me that there is one obvious thing that needs to happen, globally and without exception.

We need a vision for health in this country. We need to value health most of all. We can't have an educated, innovative population if it's not a healthy population to begin with.

It will be four years since my son Daniel died, and what his death has taught me is life is far too precious and our children far too valuable for us to just keep trying the same thing over and over again. We need to try something different if we're going to keep our kids alive.

While the reasons for young girls and women being locked out of education are varied and complex, many of us don't consider the obvious links between health and education.

Ticks and Stars are perceived as "rewards" and people interpret them as being "healthy". Why not just get rid of this system altogether? It detracts from the real message, which is that people should be eating whole, fresh, unprocessed foods.

Suddenly, everyone is asking the question: "Should I become a vegetarian?" In my view, the answer is 'no' -- unless of course you choose to do so for personal reasons, but not from a health perspective.

When someone said to me recently that he wouldn't ever become an organ donor because he was afraid that "the doctors would turn off my life support just to get my organs", I realised that not everyone had experiences that gave them my trust in modern medicine.

I now use flash sonar every day. I do it the same way I breathe, all the time and without too much conscious thought. While I still experience a small amount of anxiety at times, I can travel anywhere I need to or want to without assistance.

So, you want to lose weight. A gluten-free diet might be one that you haven't tried before, but does it result in true, long term weight loss, or will it just be another quick fix?

Hundreds of thousands of Australian children and teenagers are experiencing serious mental health issues, but many parents have no idea what is going on. But how many parents know the difference between normal adolescent behaviour and signs of serious distress?

Every time we accept the status quo of poor behavior, we are endorsing it. A strong leader should not only advise of behavior that is appropriate, they should embody it. They should be the person telling us that we don't tolerate bullying or harassment.