Public Health England (PHE) have released a new online resource 'Alcohol: applying All Our Health', detailing the range of strategic and intervention level approaches available to improve population health.
PHE's All Our Health strategy aims to 'maximise the impact healthcare professionals in England can have on improving health outcomes and reducing health inequalities', with alcohol identified as one of the key indicators in health improvement owing to the 10.4 million adults drinking above the low risk guidelines. The alcohol resource includes:
Those familiar with national guidance on developing local level strategic approaches and commissioning services will not find anything unexpected within the content, which largely provides a whistle stop overview of previous PHE and NICE alcohol guidance.
The resource states healthcare professionals should 'be aware that different degrees of alcohol misuse will require different levels of intervention and understand specific activities that can prevent, protect, and promote', and breaks down interventions as those which can be applied at local population, community, and family and invididual levels.
The measuring outcomes section details the range of resources available, mainly highlighting key measures of alcohol-related hospital admissions and the wider determinants of health indicators included within the Public Health Outcomes Framework. PHE also provide health economics resources to calculate return on investment (ROI) and cost effectiveness across public health programmes.
This of course raises the point many in the field will be acutely aware of; cuts to public health budgets cannot help with such ambitions and the many other challenges involved in increasing reach and engagement of key measures such as brief intervention and treatment services. An alcohol CQUIN for IBA in hospital settings may be one rare example of new resources in England, while the implications of a green light for Scotland's minimum pricing bid will also be celebrated by public health roles across the UK.
Other recent PHE releases include a report on localised consumption estimates and methodologies, a resource on harmful drinking and dependence and an alcohol CLeaR self-assessment tool.
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