A what-if tool to address alcohol harms

Key messages

• Excessive alcohol consumption causes a range of harms across society, from violence and
  accidents to chronic health problems including heart disease, cancer and stroke.
• Alcohol-related harm is a complex problem, with many inter-related causes. It can be difficult
  for decision-makers to know which interventions, or combinations of interventions, is likely to
  produce maximum community-wide impact.
• Dynamic simulation modelling is a useful ‘what if’ tool that enables policy makers to test the
  likely impact of a range of possible policy solutions before implementing them in the real world.
  It has been widely used in other sectors.
• This project developed a dynamic simulation model of alcohol use in NSW to forecast the
  effectiveness of a variety of approaches and explore what combination of interventions is likely
  to achieve the best outcomes.
• The project found that combining different interventions can have undesirable effects; some
  combinations have synergistic effects; and some produce impacts that are not visible within
  a policy cycle.