Abstract
New governments are fortunate in being about to use modern techniques to help them take evidence-informed decisions about which health priorities to focus on, and how to achieve maximum health gains. In this Briefing we firstly outline how evidence identifies the condition causing the greatest health loss in the Aotearoa NZ: cardiovascular disease. And secondly how evidence informs how governments can maximise health gain and cost-savings from specific interventions that have been studied for NZ. For example, we show a combined fruit and vegetable subsidy plus a sugar tax produces estimated lifetime savings of 894,000 health-adjusted life years and health system cost-savings of $19.4 billion. Applying an equity lens would also favour this dietary intervention for advancing Māori health.