Effectiveness of community-based interventions for reducing alcohol-related harm in two metropolitan and two regional sites in Victoria, Australia.

Ashlee Curtis,Kerri Coomber,Darren Palmer,Shannon Hyder,Peter G Miller,Nicolas Droste

doi:10.1111/dar.12501

Abstract

The relationship between alcohol intoxication and harm is well known, and many community-based interventions have been introduced in an attempt to reduce the rates of alcohol-related harm. The current paper uses two metropolitan and two regional Australian cities as sites to investigate the impact of community-based interventions on the reduction of alcohol-related harms. Data for injury-related emergency department (ED) presentations and police attended assaults during high-alcohol hours (i.e. 20:00-06:00h, Friday and Saturday nights) were obtained for each site from 2000 to 2015 for ED presentations and from 2000 to 2016 for police assaults. Autoregressive integrated moving average time series analyses were conducted to determine the impact of the community-based interventions introduced at each site for reducing these rates of ED injury presentations and police attended assaults. None of the community-level interventions that were introduced across the four sites resulted in a reduction in ED presentation rates or assault rates. The majority of interventions introduced across the four sites were proposed and implemented by local liquor accords. Given none of the interventions demonstrated a reduction in ED injury presentation rates or police attended assault rates, it is argued that local liquor accords may not be best placed to propose alcohol-related harm reduction measures, and instead, there should be a focus on the implementation of evidence-based regulatory strategies, such as restricted trading hours. [Curtis A, Coomber K, Droste N, Hyder S, Palmer D, Miller PG. Effectiveness of community-based interventions for reducing alcohol-related harm in two metropolitan and two regional sites in Victoria, Australia. Drug Alcohol Rev 2017;36:359-368].

Highlights

The combined social cost of alcohol and illicit drug use in Australia is approximately AUD55.2 billion a year [1]
16 The current paper investigated the impact of a variety of community-based interventions, including those proposed by liquor accords, which were introduced to address alcohol-related harm in four sites in Victoria, Australia
In Geelong, this has been in the context of varying police interventions [39, 40] and a substantially declining density of late night venues The Autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) models revealed only one association with the interventions implemented on assault rates across any of the four sites – the Night Watch Radio Program in Geelong

Summary

Introduction

The combined social cost of alcohol and illicit drug use in Australia is approximately AUD55.2 billion a year [1]. Almost half of women physically assaulted, and 84% of women who were sexually assaulted, said that the perpetrator had been drinking or taking drugs [2]. Of those reporting involvement in aggressive encounters in night time entertainment precincts, 88% had consumed alcohol prior to the incident [3]. In the absence of such political will, many community-based interventions have been introduced by local government and local liquor accords in an attempt to reduce alcohol-related harm. There have been community-based interventions implemented to reduce alcohol-related harm internationally with some success reported.

Methods

Findings

Discussion

Conclusion