Welcome to the 'news' section of IHRA's alcohol website. If you would like to feature anything on this page - such as an article about alcohol harm reduction in your country, a report or resource launch by your organisation, or an announcement about an event - please contact Jamie Bridge.
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15th January 2009
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Harm Reduction 2009: Programme Focus on Alcohol
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In December 2008, the ‘Executive Programme Committee’ for Harm Reduction 2009: IHRA’s 20th International Conference met to review the 900 abstracts that had been submitted from all over the world, and to create the conference programme. The result is another high quality, comprehensive programme which covers a range of different harm reduction interventions and approaches – for all psychoactive drugs, including alcohol.
Whereas the previous IHRA conference (Harm Reduction 2008 in Barcelona) featured the ‘4th International Conference on Alcohol and Harm Reduction’ as a side-event on the opening day, the conference organisers were keen to increase the alcohol focus in the main programme for 2009. We received over 60 abstracts this year relating to alcohol harm reduction and, as such, have been able to include a number of sessions on this important issue. The programme highlights (subject to confirmation) include:
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- Plenary Session presentations from the UN Special Rapporteurs on the Right to Health, and on Torture
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- A Major Session describing ‘An Analysis of Drinking Patterns in Four Asian Countries’ – showcasing groundbreaking regional research conducted by the International Center for Alcohol Policies and their partners, and including presentations from experts from China, Korea, Thailand and the Philippines.
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- A session on ‘Alcohol Policies and Social Marketing: Changing Drinking Cultures’ – featuring presentations from Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Argentina.
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- A session on ‘Alcohol Issues and Interventions’ – featuring presentations from China, New Zealand, Zambia and Papua New Guinea.
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Harm Reduction 2009 is scheduled to take place from the 20th to the 23rd April in Bangkok, Thailand. Since 1990, these conferences have been held around the world and have become key events for the harm reduction field. They have helped to put harm reduction on the map and to coordinate advances, innovations, evidence and advocacy in this field. Please visit the conference website – www.ihraconferences.net – for more information, including the draft programme in full, delegate fees, online registration, travel and accommodation.
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13th January 2009
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New York Health Department Links Heavy Drinking to HIV
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According to a major new report from the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, people who ‘binge drink’ tend to have many more sex partners – putting themselves at an increased risk for sexually transmitted diseases. The report – entitled ‘Alcohol Use and Risky Sex in New York City’ – also claims that heavy drinking may also be responsible for increased HIV transmission, particularly among men who have sex with men (MSM).
In the study, around 15% of adults (around 883,000 people) reported ‘binge drinking’ (defined as five or more drinks on one occasion) at least once a month. These ‘binge drinkers’ were 50% more likely than non-binge drinkers (and three times more likely than non-drinkers) to report having two to four sexual partners in the past year. In addition, 24% of the surveyed men who have sex with men (MSM) reported ‘binge drinking’, and these people were twice as likely to report having five or more sex partners in the past year. 27% of MSM said that they were under the influence of alcohol during their last sexual encounter, and drinking also reduced the chances that a man having receptive anal intercourse would be protected by a condom (from 86% down to 65%).
The new report draws on data on drinking behaviours from the New York City Community Health Survey, a yearly telephone survey of approximately 10,000 New York City adults (18 years or older). These data were then supplemented with results from the ‘New York City Youth Risk Behavior Survey’ and the ‘National HIV Behavioral Surveillance Project’. It raises important questions about the links between alcohol use and HIV – something that has received relatively little attention in terms of research and policy (especially outside of developing countries). The potential links are associated with sexual risk-taking and unsafe sexual behaviours when intoxicated, and a number of key papers on this issue have been included in Category 12 of IHRA’s online ‘50 Best Collection on Alcohol Harm Reduction’.
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6th November 2008
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‘Healthy Nightlife Toolbox’ Project Seeks Information on Nightlife Interventions
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The Healthy Nightlife Toolbox is an international web-based project focusing on the reduction of harm from alcohol and drug use among young people in nightlife settings. It is designed to support local, regional and national policy-makers and prevention workers across the European Union. In order to help develop the project, they have developed a short questionnaire to help identify existing interventions.
If you are involved with an intervention to prevent and reduce harm from alcohol and other drugs in nightlife settings, they would like to hear from you. The short questionnaire has been developed to identify interventions that can eventually be included in the Healthy Nightlife Toolbox resources. These can be programmes, projects, training methods, policies, and forms of treatment and supervision aimed at reducing and preventing harm from alcohol or drugs in nightlife settings. The questionnaire should only take a few minutes to complete.
At a later date, if your intervention is chosen for inclusion, you may be invited to fill out a longer questionnaire asking for more details. The development of the Toolbox should be complete by 2010 and it will help to identify and implement effective, evidence-based interventions at a range of levels. The final Healthy Nightlife Toolbox will contain reviewed literature, expert contact details, evidence-based interventions and policies, and a handbook containing a model of good practice for drugs and alcohol prevention in nightlife settings.
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6th November 2008
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ICAP Launch Review of Non-Commercial Alcohol
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A new report from the International Center for Alcohol Policies (ICAP) focuses on the prevalence of ‘non-commercial’ alcohol in three regions across the world - Sub-Saharan Africa, Central and Eastern Europe, and Southern Asia. Non-commercial drinks include those that are produced for home consumption, traditional or cultural beverages, unregistered and counterfeit products, and ‘surrogate’ alcoholic products such as perfumes, toiletries and cleaning products.
The report from ICAP – a major international not-for-profit organisation which is supported by leading beverage alcohol companies – features three papers that have been written by regional experts who are familiar with the regional situations, research and trends. It is hoped that this report can contribute to a better global understanding of non-commercial alcohol – which is a key concern for the alcohol harm reduction field as it is something that cannot be easily addressed by traditional supply and demand reduction interventions such as taxation (in fact, increases in the use of non-commercial alcohol may even be an unintended side-effect of such interventions).
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