Modelling the public health and safety impacts of liquor licensing changes on communities: enhancing evidence-based liquor licensing decisions

There is currently intense interest in finding efficient and reliable ways to inform evidence-based liquor licensing decisions. The Western Australian (WA) Liquor Control Act currently identifies harm minimisation as a primary objective of the Act. The current review of the WA Liquor Control Act has highlighted the need for strengthening the evidence base in order to improve current decision making processes related to new and existing liquor outlets and monitoring the effectiveness of liquor regulation, its implementation and enforcement. This multi-stage project will develop a model to assist in predicting the likely impacts of proposed/planned licensing changes on a range of alcohol-related indicators (e.g. emergency department presentations, road crashes, assaults) within WA and other Australian jurisdictions. The model will take into account the features of a specifically proposed change to the liquor licensing landscape in a particular region (e.g. new liquor store, extended trading permit for existing hotel) and the demographic and socio-economic characteristics of the location in which it will occur. Indicators of alcohol-related harms will be drawn from a range of reliable sources, including alcohol sales data, hospital admissions, emergency department presentations, deaths and police reported assaults and road crash data. This project is funded by Healthway (WA Health Promotion Foundation).