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 will 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.

What are the expected 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.

What is the 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 will be developed with input from policy makers to ensure that the model is capable of evaluating a range of policy relevant interventions and produce outputs relevant to all stakeholders.