Building an economic model to assess alcohol interventions

What is the issue?

Alcohol is a harmful, toxic and addictive substance that causes many health conditions, injuries and deaths. Alcohol use is linked to 29 diseases and injuries, mainly various cancers and transport accidents but also cardiovascular diseases, suicide and self-inflicted injuries. In Australia, 4,090 deaths (4.09% of all deaths) were attributable to alcohol consumption in 2018 and 4.46% of the overall health burden was attributable to alcohol use.

How did the project address the issue?

This project will develop an epidemiological and economic model that predicts the health and economic impact of several policy-relevant strategies and scenarios to reduce alcohol consumption in the Australian population. The findings of this model will assist making the case for greater policy action in this area.

Relevance for policy and practice

An alcohol model that can predict the long-term health and cost impacts of policies to reduce the consumption of alcohol will be useful for policy makers to make the economic case for these policies. The model has been developed with input from policy makers to ensure it is capable of evaluating a range of policy-relevant interventions and producing outputs relevant to all stakeholders.

Outcomes

• Ability to quantify the economic case for policy action on reducing alcohol consumption.
• Improved alcohol policies.
• Infrastructure to more rapidly assess the impact of proposed alcohol policies.
• Lower alcohol-related health and economic burden.