Public Health England (PHE) have released a listing page of information and other resources to support commissioners, service providers and others providing alcohol and drug interventions.
The resource will mainly be of use to those involved in the treatment sector, though includes an updated 'Alcohol: applying all our health' resource to support preventative activities and recent 'why invest?' resource. A full range of NICE alcohol guidance can be found here whilst Alcohol Research UK have a set of links and resources on identifying the evidence base.
The former Alcohol Learning Centre (ALC) has now been moved to archived content, although the IBA e-learning programme is still available and appears to be receiving significant numbers of visitors. The ALC was established during the £22 million Alcohol Improvement Programme (AIP) which ran from 2008-2011 and included regional alcohol programmes promoting a number of 'High Impact Changes' such as IBA and hospital-based alcohol teams. However an evaluation released in 2013 suggested it was too soon to tell whether the AIP had been effective. Indeed alcohol-related hospital admissions continued to rise, at least under the broad measure, albeit that it made have halted the rate of the rise.
A recent history of national alcohol programmes
Whilst drug and alcohol treatment services have been under increasing pressure in the wake of ongoing cuts to public health budgets, national alcohol programmes and resources have also been diminished in recent years. Although PHE continue to support and promote local activity, the scope of current national programmes mainly consists of a second round of 'Local Alcohol Action Areas' (LAAAs) and a forthcoming CQUIN to incentivise brief intervention (IBA) across hospitals from April. Whilst neither include new monies, the scope of the CQUIN has potential to reach significant numbers of risky drinkers, albeit in the context of questions over the real world implementation of IBA.
In relation to communications, usually a popular area of activity given its visibility, the last national activity planned on this appeared from PHE in 2014, though reported alcohol as a 'low priority' due to the paucity of evidence for its value in actual behaviour change. However 2014 plans to develop participative abstinence activities or irregular drinking may be seen in PHE's subsequent support of Dry January and recent addition of a One You Days Off app alongside its Drink Tracker app.
The revision of the recommended adult guidelines in 2016 has of course received significantly more attention, although the Government consultation response on how to communicate the guidelines made no firm commitments. The Department of Health's advisory position on how to communicate the guidelines on drinks labels have also been viewed as largely unsatisfactory from many public health voices. However the controversial Responsibility Deal has expired with no apparent further Government interest though industry funded Drinkware continues to deliver widespread communication of its responsible drinking messages.
Meanwhile policy debates are set to remain focused on the issue of pricing as Scotland's Minimum Unit Pricing (MUP) implementation date approaches. Whether or not MUP is eventually adopted for England too, many will wish to highlight that effective multi-component approaches to reducing alcohol harms should include other local and national activity, and increasing the investment in such activities should be considered an invest to save measure.
Figure 1: PHE's 'why invest?' resource encourages areas to adopt 'multi-component' approaches
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