Alcohol Awareness Week (AAW) 2015 recently took place, running from 16-22 November. As in previous years, Alcohol Concern encouraged local areas and others to get people thinking about alcohol and its impact through a range of suggested activities.
How significant though is AAW at a time of increasing digital communication, improved overall recognition of alcohol harms, and the growth of other alcohol campaigns and resources? Indeed Alcohol Concern and many local areas have increasingly integrated the promotion of Dry January as part of AAW activities. Given the limited impact of 'awareness raising' activity on behaviour change, but promising evidence for the possible benefits of 'month off' campaigns, this shift may be welcomed by some.
Either way, AAW still appears a relatively popular opportunity for a range of agencies and local areas to highlight alcohol-related 'facts', health messages, apps or services. Twitter activity took place mainly via #AAW2015, but also via #AAW15 and some other localised tags such as #drinklessenjoymore. Some areas use AAW to take to public places offering 'traditional face to face' support and interventions, despite November not being the most attractive month for engaging the public outdoors.
Also during AAW...
Professor Kevin Fenton, Public Health England Director for Health and Wellbeing wrote a layman's piece for the Huffington Post on 'Changing you relationship with alcohol', though perhaps less original than his 2013 call on 'Having the conversation about alcohol' via the PHE blog.
A special AAW collection of slides on 'interesting things about alcohol' from Andrew Brown's round up of 'things you may have missed' highlights some useful info - for instance half of adult offenders were drunk when committing an offence in the last twelve months, or that around 15% of drinkers experience dependency at some point in their lives.
AAW also prompts a range of personal accounts or experiences of addiction and recovery to be published - see here for an interesting perspective on alcohol withdrawal by Professor Jonathan Chick. Whilst often emotive, it is hard to assess what role personal accounts may play in helping others recognise potential issues or improve understanding of alcohol problems - an area which is of course complex and often misunderstood.
Overall though it seems fair to say AAW presents an opportunity to help sustain momentum around the alcohol agenda, and allow various groups and areas to promote resources. However it could be argued that all such things have a lifespan, and as such its profile could be increasingly under pressure from cuts and other developments. We'll have to see what #AAW16 brings, but expect Dry January and other campaign coverage before then...
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