U.S. National Institute funding for NDRI alcohol study

February 2023

National Drug Research Institute (NDRI) researchers will lead a project examining the impact physical availability of alcohol has on sales and related harm as part of a $2 million grant with colleagues from the United States.

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism made the five-year funding grant to the Prevention Research Center, based in Berkeley, California, as part of its ‘Environmental Approaches to Prevention’ Center grant.

Led in Australia by NDRI’s Professor Tanya Chikritzhs and Dr William Gilmore and in the U.S. by Dr Paul Gruenewald and Bill Ponicki, the ‘Community alcohol sales and related problems: filling the critical research gap’ study will use Western Australian alcohol sales data to distinguish effects of alcohol sales from other factors that influence problems, such as overcrowding in bars. WA’s alcohol retail licensing system and socioeconomic conditions are similar to many states in the U.S.

“Coupled with the ‘Environmental Approaches to Prevention’ Research Center’s commitment to the development and application of geostatistical spatial analysis models to population studies of alcohol and drug problems, we can make significant strides toward filling the research gap and advancing research for the interests of community-based preventive interventions,” the successful funding application stated.

Click here to find out more about the project