NICE advice for alcohol service commissioning

Guidance on commissioning alcohol services from NICE aims to help with benchmarking levels of alcohol dependence and harmful drinking in populations, along with methods for working out cost effectiveness of increasing screening and brief interventions. All of this is based on existing guidelines on alcohol harm (CG 115, CG 100 and PH 24). Health Scotland has published an evaluation of implementing brief interventions in the NHS since 2008, covering primary care, A&E and antenatal care. As the Scottish government prepares to legislate for minimum alcohol pricing, a study of views amongst people in north west England on pricing found that most people surveyed though that lower prices increased drinking while higher prices would have no effect on alcohol consumption. Alcohol Research UK has published a qualitative study of attitudes to the pricing question, finding that most people surveyed were not convinced that minimum pricing would be effective (although the study also found that most people didn't fully understand how the policy might work, either). A study from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation looks at how far young people's attitudes to drinking are influenced by the media.