Abstract
Our recently published study examined long-term trends in Excess Winter Mortality (EWM) in Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ) for a 145 year period (from 1876 to 2020). We found that the average age- and sex-standardised EWM Index (EWMI) increased from 1.20 during 1886-1917 to 1.34 in the 1920s, before gradually decreasing to 1.14 in the 2010s. In percentage terms, there was a favourable decline in winter excess deaths from 7.9% of annual deaths in the 1920s, down to 4.5% in the 2010s (1450 excess deaths per year). These and other findings support continuing efforts to investigate the public health benefits of improving housing standards and reducing seasonal respiratory infections. This EWM measure should continue to be monitored to ensure NZ keeps making progress in such domains.