#COAWeek2023: The family secret
This week is COA week, an annual campaign organised by the National Association for Children of Alcoholics (Nacoa) to raise awareness of children affected by a parent’s drinking.
The 2023 theme is ‘the family secret.’ Drinking is often described as ‘the hidden suffering in families,’ and is likely to remain so until we dismantle the stigma associated with drinking and drug use. COA week is here to break the silence.
Nacoa have signposted several ways we can help ourselves, others, and in schools and colleges on their website. Keep reading to hear more about the work they do in our ‘meet the members’ interview with operations consultant Huseyin Djemil.
Does minimum unit pricing reduce alcohol-related hospitalisation?
A systematic review looking at the impact of minimum unit pricing has reported a ‘moderate-to-strong’ effect for reducing alcohol-related hospital outcomes.
The project synthesised 22 studies exploring minimum pricing policies in various countries including Canada, England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Most of the included real-world studies indicated that acute alcohol-related admissions responded immediately to the introduction of MUP, decreasing by 2–9%. Chronic alcohol-related admissions lagged by 2–3 years and reduced by 4–9% annually.
As minimum pricing can target the heaviest consumers from the most deprived groups (who tend to be at greatest risk of alcohol harms) these policies have the potential to reduce health inequalities.
What are the risk-factors for alcohol-related violence?
The Violence Research Group at Cardiff University looked at several competing explanations for violence in the night-time economy, such as footfall, ambient conditions and major sporting events.
International rugby matches at home, the temperature, national holidays, the day of the week, and the number of patrons predicted assault-related injury. The research found that queueing and queueing theory can help to explain why and how alcohol-related violence is concentrated, and so mitigating the risk of violence is therefore likely to be achieved through managing queues.
Read the full paper here.
Tackling liver disease in Parliament
The British Liver Trust (BLT) and APPG on Liver Disease and Liver Cancer hosted a ‘Check Your Liver Health’ event in Westminster, offering MPs a FibroScan and sharing policy and campaign messaging. Over 90 MPs attended to pledge their support for BLT’s campaign to save lives through earlier diagnosis of liver disease.
The Welsh parliament (Senedd Cymru) held the first ever debate on the liver disease and liver cancer crisis in Wales to mark the Less Survivable Cancers Awareness Day and Love Your Liver month. Joel James MS, chair of the Cross-party Group on Liver Disease and Liver Cancer opened the debate, highlighting the surge in liver disease deaths over the past 2 years, and calling for increasing the hepatology workforce, better earlier detection, and more alcohol care teams in hospitals.
Cancer and alcohol: What is the link, and what can be done?
World Cancer Day took place earlier this month, raising awareness of cancer and encouraging its prevention, detection, and treatment. Approximately 1 in 25 cancer cases in the UK are linked to alcohol, which plays a causal role in at least seven cancers, including two of the most common (breast and bowel). Last year, the World Cancer Research Fund announced alcohol and cancer as a new global policy priority.
With only 1 in 3 adults currently aware of this link, better alcohol labelling and mass media campaigns are essential.
Find out more about the scientific evidence on the link between alcohol and cancer, and how people can reduce their alcohol consumption.
Events
Opening doors: ensuring access for all to alcohol support
Alcohol Change UK
2 March 2023
AHA full member meeting
Alcohol Health Alliance UK
14 March 2023
Managing drug and alcohol problems in primary care
Royal College of General Practitioners
16–17 March 2023
Acknowledging the elephant: Understanding and reducing the burden of alcohol harm on hospital and health services
Alcohol Forum Ireland
30 March 2023
Email Paula Leonard (paula@alcoholforum.org) with any queries
Alcohol evidence in policy and practice
SPECTRUM Consortium and University of Stirling
9–11 May 2023
Registrations open end of Feb. Email Megan Cook (megan.cook@stir.ac.uk) with any queries
Meet the members
Every month, we speak to a member of the AHA to find out more about what they do and how their organisation is working to end alcohol harm.
Today we meet Huseyin Djemil, who has worked with Nacoa since 2018.
How does your organisation help to reduce alcohol harm?
Nacoa has four broad aims: to offer information, advice, and support to children of alcohol-dependent parents; to reach professionals who work with them; to raise their profile in the public consciousness; and to promote research into the problems they face and the prevention of alcoholism developing in this vulnerable group.
What inspires you most in your job?
The work Nacoa does and the people who do it.
Working for Nacoa is like being part of a family. Hilary (the CEO) and the team have created an ecosystem over the 30+ years they have been in operation that includes members, patrons, ambassadors, trustees, staff, and volunteers. In fact, at some level everyone at Nacoa volunteers, meaning that they go above and beyond what is expected of them or what they are contracted to do.
The Nacoa ecosystem includes an army of active volunteers (approx 500 people) across the country working in a number of roles including on the helpline, doing deputations, and giving a lived experience perspective to training with professionals, research projects, fundraising, social media etc. Nacoa did not close during the COVID-19 pandemic and we are open over Christmas and New Year too.
What change do you think would make the biggest difference in reducing alcohol harm?
Alcohol harm comes in many forms, for those that drink and for those around them, including family, friends and wider society. Children of parents who drink too much often feel isolated and alone. Nacoa makes them aware that they are not alone, and that help is available in the form of a free, inclusive, non-judgemental, confidential helpline and a community of people that understand what they are going through because they have, and in many cases, are still working through it. Giving these children an opportunity to talk about their own drinking also helps them to make informed choices.
Therefore, making the children of parents who drink too much a priority with a funded strategy to address this alcohol related harm would make a significant difference to this vulnerable group and to wider society.
