Alcohol misuse - reports

These reports and articles present information on a number of different aspects of alcohol use and misuse. You will also find relevant resources in policy and guidance.

The reports have been categorised according to their main focus under the following headings:

Most of these reports are in PDF format - see how to access PDF files. 

Influences on alcohol use and trends in use

Alcohol Concern (2011) Making alcohol a health priority: opportunities to curb alcohol harms and reduce rising costs
This report highlights the rising trends of poor health and wellbeing linked to alcohol misuse in England and the poor state of the current public health response. It calls to action those who can turn this situation around by ensuring that alcohol is a public health and NHS priority and that sufficient resources are allocated to tackle alcohol misuse at a local and national level. 

Alcohol Concern (2009) Off measure: how we underestimate how much we drink
An analysis from the Centre for Public Health published by Alcohol Concern shows drink surveys used to measure the public’s alcohol consumption grossly underestimate how much people really drink. The difference between survey data and actual sales data is the equivalent of 430 million units of alcohol per week.

British Medical Association (2009) Under the influence - the damaging effect of alcohol marketing on young people
This report aims to identify effective ways of protecting young people from the influence of alcohol promotion and marketing, addressing the pro-alcohol social norms to which they are exposed.

British Medical Association Board of Science (2008) Alcohol misuse: tackling the UK epidemic
This report from the BMA considers the problematic levels of alcohol misuse in the UK. It examines the patterns and trends of alcohol consumption and goes on to review the range of adverse effects both on the individual and society that are associated with its misuse.

Department for Education (2009) Young people and alcohol: meanings, practices and contexts
This report, authored by I Warwick et al from the Thomas Coram research unit, is one of a number of publications prepared for a Department for Children, Schools and Families project conducted between February 2008 and February 2009. Included in the report is a summary of patterns of alcohol consumption among young people, factors associated with young people's use of alcohol and emerging responses to such use. Key findings from the project fieldwork are reported and potential implications regarding the reduction of alcohol use and alcohol-related harms are highlighted.

Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety (2008) Adult drinking patterns in Northern Ireland 2008 (PDF 665KB)
The report from the DHSSPS can be found in the 'Other publications' section of this page of information on 'Drug and alcohol misuse' in Northern Ireland. It presents the main findings of a survey carried out to provide an up-to-date picture of adult drinking patterns in Northern Ireland in 2008.

Joseph Rowntree Foundation (2011) Young people, alcohol and the media
This study explored how entertainment media accessed by young people represented alcohol. It explored young people's interpretations of these messages and their potential influence on alcohol use. The way media professionals thought alcoholrelated issues should be presented was also investigated.

Joseph Rowntree Foundation (2011) Young people, alcohol and influences
This report presents the findings from a major study which develops evidence of how different domains of influence work together, understanding their relative importance in tackling different patterns of drinking among different groups.

Joseph Rowntree Foundation (2010) Ethnicity and alcohol: a review of the UK literature
The literature review explores differences in drinking patterns among minority ethnic groups over the last 15 years. It looks at cultural and social contexts around alcohol use and examines help-seeking, support and service provision for minority ethnic groups.

Joseph Rowntree Foundation (2009) Drinking in the UK: an exploration of trends
This study published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation is a systematic review of research relevant to trends in alcohol consumption over the last 20 to 30 years in the UK.

Joseph Rowntree Foundation (2007) Drinking places: where people drink and why
The study investigates where people drink alcohol and why in two contrasting communities, one urban and one rural.

Joseph Rowntree Foundation (2006) Alcohol strategy and the drinks industry: a partnership for prevention?
This report examines how government alcohol policy has developed as a result of its identification of the drinks industry as a key partner in preventing alcohol problems and reducing levels of harm and suggests ways to improve regulation, self-regulation, industry activity in education, training and research, and partnership working.

Mental Health Foundation (2006) Cheers? Understanding the relationship between alcohol and mental health
This report from the Mental Health Foundation examines some of the evidence associating mental health problems with alcohol and the implications for policy practice and treatment.

World Health Organization (2009) Alcohol and injuries: emergency department studies in an international perspective
This publication synthesises the results of a number of hospital emergency department studies conducted in different cultural and health care settings, including the WHO Collaborative Study on Alcohol and Injuries. It provides an introduction to the epidemiology of alcohol related injuries, addresses public policy implications and equips the reader with practical information on interventions that can be implemented in emergency departments.

Attitudes towards alcohol

Alcohol Concern (2010) Counting the cost: irresponsible alcohol promotions in the night-time economy in Wales
This study examined the prevalence of alcohol promotions within the night-time economy in Wales. The report concludes that irresponsible alcohol promotions in pubs, bars and clubs are contributing to excessive consumption with the resultant adverse health and crime-related consequences.

BMC Public Health (2010) Women's knowledge and attitudes regarding alcohol consumption in pregnancy: a national survey
This study was based on a survey undertaken in Australia involving over a thousand women. It concludes that "Australian women of childbearing age have poor knowledge of the specific effects of alcohol in pregnancy on the unborn child and one in five women have a neutral or positive attitude towards alcohol consumption in pregnancy".

European Commission (2010) Special Eurobarometer 331:  EU citizens’ attitudes towards alcohol (PDF 2.77MB)
Findings are presented in this EC report from an EU-wide Eurobarometer poll carried out in autumn 2009. Where appropriate the findings have been compared with a similar poll carried out in the autumn of 2006, around the time of the adoption of the EU alcohol strategy.

Joseph Rowntree Foundation (2010) Alcohol consumption and family life
This study examined how parents teach young children (aged 5 to 12) about alcohol and used a national survey and in-depth case studies to explore parental attitudes towards alcohol, and family drinking practices. The study found that parents are “largely successful in conveying the social pleasures and risks of drinking at home and messages that alcohol should be consumed in moderation”. However there were gaps in what was learned at home around the health consequences of drinking and the potential risks of drinking outside the home.

Joseph Rowntree Foundation (2010) Pre-teens learning about alcohol: drinking and family contexts
Childhood experiences are crucial to forming future drinking habits. This study found that children in the 7 to 12 age bracket have a fairly sophisticated knowledge of alcohol and its effects. Other findings demonstrated the importance of home as a source of learning about alcohol and the influence of parents’ drinking styles, but also that parents feel limited in their ability to teach children to drink responsible in the face of external pressures.

Joseph Rowntree Foundation (2009) Children, young people and alcohol: how they learn and how to prevent excessive use
Two linked research reviews examine how young people acquire their knowledge, attitudes, expectations and intentions about alcohol; and what interventions work best to prevent excessive use of alcohol.

Joseph Rowntree Foundation (2009) Tackling alcohol harm: lessons from other fields
"There a clear need to change attitudes, knowledge and behaviour relating to alcohol in the UK." This report presents seven case studies, each telling the story of an initiative designed to bring about attitudinal, behavioural or policy change.

NHS Information Centre for health and social care (NHS IC) (2008) Health Survey for England 2007: Healthly lifestyles: knowledge, attitudes and behaviour
The survey focuses on knowledge, attitudes and behaviour on key aspects of lifestyle. A chapter on alcohol consumption by men and women aged 16 measures drinking in the last week, examines knowledge of the recommended maximum daily intake of alcohol and of what constitutes a unit of alcohol, and explores attitudes to drinking.

Scottish Government (2008) Scottish Social Attitudes Survey 2007: Something to be ashamed of or part of our way of life? Attitudes towards alcohol in Scotland
Survey based on a module of questions designed to provide robust baseline data on attitudes to alcohol in 2007, in advance of the publication of the Scottish Government's long-term strategic approach to tackling alcohol problems. A summary of key findings is also available in the Research finding.

Impact on health

BMJ (2011) Association of alcohol consumption with selected cardiovascular disease outcomes: a systematic review and meta-analysis
This study assessed the effect of alcohol consumption on multiple cardiovascular outcomes. It concluded that light to moderate alcohol consumption is associated with a reduced risk of multiple cardiovascular outcomes.

BMJ (2011) Alcohol attributable burden of incidence of cancer in eight European countries based on results from prospective cohort study
This study concluded that in western Europe, an important proportion of cases of cancer can be attributable to alcohol consumption, especially consumption higher than the recommended upper limits. The data supports current political efforts to reduce or to abstain from alcohol consumption to reduce the incidence of cancer.

Reviews of services and the impact of current policies

Audit Commission and Healthcare Commission (2008) Are we choosing health? The impact of policy on the delivery of health improvement programmes and services
Joint report which assesses the impact government policy has had on: narrowing health inequalities; improving sexual and mental health; and reducing smoking, alcohol misuse and obesity.

Audit Scotland (2009) Drug and alcohol services in Scotland
Drug and alcohol-related death rates in Scotland are among the highest in Europe and have doubled in the past 15 years. This report from Audit Scotland calls for a more coordinated effort across the public services.

BMC Public Health (2008) An evaluation of alcohol attendances to an inner city emergency department before and after the introduction of the UK Licensing Act 2003
The Licensing Act 2003 implemented in November 2005 across England and Wales allowed more flexible and longer opening hours for licensed premises. The study, reported in the online BioMed Central journal 'Public Health', investigated the effect of The Act on alcohol related attendances to an inner city emergency department in Birmingham, UK.

Care Quality Commission (2010) Message in a bottle: a joint inspection of youth alcohol misuse and offending
This reports on the work of youth offending teams (YOTs) in tackling alcohol misuse by children and young people shows that YOTs are offering significant and effective resources  where alcohol misuse is believed to be directly linked to offending but recommends a 'nationally validated holistic assessment to ensure appropriate interventions are offered.'

Home Office: Alcohol pricing
In early 2010, the then government commissioned three pieces of research on alcohol pricing. This research has been considered as part of the review of alcohol pricing.

House of Commons Health Committee: Alcohol
The report calls for minimum pricing as an essential part of a wider policy aimed at changing attitudes to alcohol. The policy also includes education, information campaigns and labelling. The Royal College of Nursing has commented on this report. Go to: Action needed on alcohol abuse. 

House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (2009) Reducing Alcohol Harm: health services in England for alcohol misuse 47th Report of Session 2008-09
This report concludes that the Department of Health needs to demonstrate its ability to effectively influence local commissioners, the drinks industry, and people's drinking behaviour and to work more closely with other government departments responsible for policies affecting alcohol consumption.

National Audit Office (NAO) (2008) Reducing Alcohol Harm: Health services in England for alcohol misuse
This report from the National Audit Office finds that "Alcohol-related ill-health is an increasing burden for the National Health Service. Alcohol misuse costs the health service in the order of £2.7 billion a year, but efforts to address it locally are not in general well-planned".

NHS Confederation and Royal College of Physicians (2010) Too much of the hard stuff: what alcohol costs the NHS
The cost of providing alcohol-related services is escalating and this briefing paper argues that the burden on the NHS will be unsustainable if alcohol-related disease continues to increase. This briefing outlines the extent of the problem and gives examples of where the NHS is managing problem drinkers effectively and efficiently.

NHS Quality Improvement Scotland (2008) Understanding alcohol misuse in Scotland: harmful drinking: final report
This report summarises the findings of work organised by Scottish Emergency Department Alcohol Audit (SEDAA) steering group and carried out in 15- 20 mainland emergency departments in Scotland between October 2005 and June 2007. Examples of good practice are highlighted and recommendations for further work and service improvements are made.

Research on interventions

Alcohol Concern: Right time, right place: alcohol-harm reduction strategies with children and young people
“Young people who consume alcohol are damaging their health at greater levels than ever and the cost to health and ambulance services due to underage alcohol consumption is in the region of £19 million per annum”. This report calls for earlier identification of young people engaged in 'risky' drinking such as young people attending A&E or getting into trouble with the police for alcohol, so that they can access information, advice and support.

BMC Public Health (2007) The DYD-RCT protocol: an on-line randomised controlled trial of an interactive computer-based intervention compared with a standard information website to reduce alcohol consumption among hazardous drinkers
The trial, reported in this open access journal from BioMed Central, will provide information on the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of an on-line intervention to help heavy drinkers drink less.

BMC Public Health: Parenting strategies for reducing adolescent alcohol use: a Delphi consensus study
This research identifies a comprehensive set of parenting strategies for preventing or reducing adolescent alcohol consumption. These strategies can be promoted to parents to help them implement national recommendations regarding adolescent alcohol use.

FASE (Focus on Alcohol Safe Environment)
The FASE project developed from a European Commission call for the collection of best practices in workplace strategies to reduce the harmful impact of harmful alcohol consumption on the economy. The project is working on interventions to reduce harmful alcohol consumption in three areas : alcohol and work; alcohol and drinking environments; alcohol and advertising. The aim of the project is to undertake systematic reviews and to systematically collect examples of best practice, to prepare reports on guidance for the implementation of best practice and to share knowledge and expertise with all relevant professional networks in Europe at country, regional and municipal level.

Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR) (2008) Predicting successful treatment outcome of web-based self-help for problem drinkers: secondary analysis from a randomized controlled trial
Web based self-help interventions "have shown promising results in terms of cost-effectiveness, and they offer opportunities to reach out on a broad scale to problem drinkers". This research aimed to establish whether certain groups of problem drinkers benefit more from we-based interventions than others. JMIR is a peer-reviewed open access journal on health and health care in the Internet age.

Nursing Standard (2009) Improving services for people with alcohol-related problems: This article was written by Carolyn Mason, head of professional development at RCN Northern Ireland. It describes a one year project which demonstrated the effectiveness of nursing interventions and the development of specialist alcohol nursing services to improve services for people who misuse alcohol. The project team included representation from England, Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland. RCN members can access the full text of this article via the RCN e-Library.

Royal College of Nursing: Nurse-led alcohol services can help 40% of alcoholics to abstain from alcohol
This news item on the RCN website describes a research study presented at the Royal College of Nursing’s 2010 International Research Conference by Dr Kathryn Cobain, Research Fellow at the University of Liverpool.  The findings demonstrate that “regular information and advice sessions from alcohol specialist nurses could help 40% of dependent drinkers to give up alcohol altogether”.

Royal College of Physicians and Royal College of Nursing (2009) Survey on alcohol treatment services
The survey asked gastroenterologists, hepatologists, acute physicians and nurses for their expert opinion on Government policy initiatives and national strategies to tackle alcohol related harm, the provision of service for people with alcohol related health problems and the scale of alcohol related health harms in their particular clinical environment.

Scottish Government (2010) The societal cost of alcohol misuse in Scotland for 2007
This study uses a cost of illness approach to derive estimates of the cost of alcohol misuse in Scotland for 2007. A summary of research findings is available: view research findings.

World Health Organization (2009) Evidence for the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of interventions to reduce alcohol-related harm (PDF 1.69MB)
This report updates the evidence for policies that aim to minimise health and social harms that arise from the use of alcohol. Interventions include awareness raising campaigns, drink-driving policies, marketing, pricing policies, and reducing harm from drinking environments.

Statistics and data

Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety: Drug and alcohol misuse statistical publications
This page brings together a range of statistics for Northern Ireland.

Alcohol Information Scotland: Alcohol statistics Scotland 2011
This biennial publication presents the latest available information from a range of national data sources relating to alcohol.  These include routine data sources and surveys.  The four main sections are: The Alcohol Market, Alcohol Consumption, Alcohol and Health Harm and Alcohol and Social Harm.

National Statistics (2009) Alcohol related deaths in the UK 2000-2009
The statistics trend in the rate of alcohol-related deaths is now levelling out following rapid increases since the early 1990s.

NHS Information Centre for health and social care: Statistics on alcohol - England, 2011
This report acts as a reference point for health issues relating to alcohol use and misuse, providing information obtained from a number of sources in a user-friendly format. It covers topics such as drinking habits and behaviours among adults (aged 16 and over) and school children (aged 11 to 15), drinking-related ill health and mortality, affordability of alcohol and alcohol-related costs. The report contains previously published information and also includes additional new analyses. Statistics also available for earlier years, see NHS Information Centre for health and social care: Alcohol

National Public Health Service for Wales and Wales Centre for Health (2009) A profile of alcohol and health in Wales (PDF 1.69MB)
This intelligence report contains information taken from several data sources and includes statistics on subjects including underage drinking, alcohol-related deaths, drinking during pregnancy, binge drinking and hospital admissions related to alcohol.

North West Public Health Observatory (2008) Alcohol-attributable fractions for England
A review of the relationships between alcohol consumption and alcohol-related harms. The report examines the major causes of ill-health and mortality due to alcohol and determines what proportion of cases in England are caused by alcohol.

North West Public Health Observatory: Local alcohol profiles for England
New alcohol profiles for each local authority in England have been published.

Scottish Government (2008) Costs of alcohol use and misuse in Scotland
This report presents costs of alcohol use and misuse based on a "cost of illness" approach. It attempts to quantify the costs associated with alcohol use/ misuse, including both incident cases in the base year but also costs from individuals who still suffer.

Scottish Government (2008): Scottish Health Survey: revised alcohol consumption estimates 2003
A detailed update of the analysis included in the 2003 Scottish Health Survey alcohol chapter (for adults - volume two: Chapter one and one table from the children's report - volume three: chapter one) published in November 2005.

Welsh Assembly Government: Substance misuse statistics
This page on the Welsh Assembly Government website brings together statistics on substance misuse in Wales from 2005 onwards.

World Health Organization: Global Information System on Alcohol and Health (GISAH)
The information system brings together a large amount of information about key aspects of the alcohol situation in WHO member states and the consequences of alcohol consumption and alcohol-related harm in individual countries. Wherever possible it includes trends in alcohol use and related mortality since 1961.