Analyzing and Comparing the Association Between Control Policy Measures and Alcohol Consumption in Europe

Abstract

This paper focuses on the association between alcohol consumption and the introduction of control policy measures, within the AMPHORA 12 country European project. We estimated the “net” associations between intervention policies and total alcohol consumption, taking into account contextual socioeconomic factors and including all policies in the same regression model. The associations were estimated for each country, and the country-specific results were compared in a random-effects meta-analysis. The association between policy measures and total alcohol consumption was very heterogeneous among countries. Policies on restricting alcohol availability and on enhancing the minimum age for alcohol purchase appeared to be related to decreasing alcohol consumption. The evidence regarding the effect of the others kinds of interventions was more contradictory.

Keywords :

• meta-analysis
• policy measures
• time series
• alcohol consumption

THE AUTHORS

Michela Baccini, Ph.D., is Researcher in medical statistics at the University of Florence. Author of several papers in the field of environmental epidemiology and biostatistics, she worked on time series analysis, meta-analysis, health impact assessment, and multiple imputation.

Giulia Carreras, Ph.D., is a Statistician at the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute in Florence. She is author of several papers in the field of primary prevention and environmental epidemiology. Her key research areas are Markov models and dynamic models for decision making, analysis of prevention studies, and health impact assessment.