Alcohol Misuse: Electronic Longitudinal Alcohol Study in Communities (ELAStiC)

There exists a unique opportunity to exploit existing UK data to better understand alcohol misuse across the life course. The overall goals of this project are to 1) incorporate data into the UK Secure eResearch Platform (UKSeRP) and develop facilities to enable research access, 2) undertake hypothesis driven research using this platform to provide critical insights into alcohol use, it's effects and pathways into harm, 3) exploit the current research group's expertise to capitalise on the most recent developments in analytical methodology, and 4) make explicit the policy relevance of the work and exploit opportunities to interface with possible intervention development. This project therefore aims to leverage the value of a broad set of longitudinal studies and data linkage facilities to construct an analytical platform within UKSeRP that facilitates the investigation of harmful alcohol use across the life course. The proposal is balanced, it combines a broad skillset, with considerable expertise with the available data together with techniques in the analysis of such data.

The data itself covers youngsters, those in mid- and later-life. These data are then linked to routine administrative data including those from schools (e.g. educational attainment), the NHS (health), the police (anti-social behaviour) and other sources including births and deaths. These then allow us to understand how alcohol affects general health, health service use, mental health, educational attainment and criminality. The nature of these data also allow us to understand how alcohol use affects cognitive decline in later life, and emotional and cognitive development in young people.

There has already been considerable activity generating opportunities to use longitudinal data for research, although only limited work has looked at alcohol specifically. We are therefore able to exploit these on-going investments and collaborate with the UK Dementia Platform, Centre for the Improvement of Population Health through e-Records Research (CIPHER) at Swansea University (funded by a consortium led by the Medical Research Council) which will provide technical and financial support for data linkage. In addition, the project will explicitly examine the policy and impact relevance of outputs, use outputs to investigate opportunities to develop novel interventions with, for example, the Centre for the Development and Evaluation of Complex Interventions for Public Health Improvement (funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, amongst others). These collaborations bring together a unique set of skills that are required for such work as well as technical support.

Fundamental to the project is the opportunity to bring together a diverse skillset. Investigators come from a broad range of backgrounds and have varying skills in relation to the analysis and interpretation of longitudinal data. This provides opportunities for work in specific areas to inform the project as a whole. Although the project is based on specific research hypotheses, these feed into work packages that use the project team's skills as a whole to develop relevant outputs. This added value is realised through organising resources to maximise collaborative working and therefore go beyond the fundamental questions asked of the data.

Academics nationally and internationally will benefit through documenting and making available the enhanced data created as a part of this project (see Data Management Plan). Peer reviewed journal articles will contribute to numerous fields including epidemiology, alcohol, psychology, health and sociology. Moreover, while a data driven study, this project does overlap with key theoretical constructs associated with behaviour (e.g. disinhibition), the socio-ecology of alcohol misuse and mechanistic approaches including brain function and damage.

Research outputs are varied and are likely to be of interest to, not only academics but also, given the nature of some of the work (e.g. the effect of mother's alcohol consumption on their child's development) the public as well. Indeed, research surrounding health generally and alcohol in particular regularly feature in national and international media. Through disseminating our findings in partnership with media outlets we will be able to enrich the public's own knowledge of the harms that alcohol might elicit.

We aim to contribute towards evidence based policy-making and influence public debate and legislation at a local, regional, national and international level. End users include national and local policy makers and statutory authorities including social services, education and the police. Nationally there is interest in which policy mechanisms could curb the growing costs of alcohol-related harm. There are numerous way our work impacts at this level, probably of greatest significance is the work streams on well-being, alcohol price and availability. Also, at a local level, Local Authorities are now required to clearly state how they are working towards ensuring their residents health and well-being. For example, planning departments will be interested in the effects of alcohol availability; education services will be interest in the effects of alcohol on children's development. Internationally, we will engage with organisations including the World Health Organisation.

There are likely significant opportunities with the third sector. We have engaged with Alcohol Concern and Newlink to facilitate opportunities to work across policy makers and the third sector to realise outputs in a manner that can inform the development and implementation of interventions to challenge alcohol misuse and related harms.

The project further has a strong emphasis on advancing early career researchers. Daniel Farewell is a MRC fellow, and postdoctoral researchers will be employed on the project and a training budget requested in order to consolidate and extend their skill base. We therefore aim to contribute to the knowledge economy through delivering highly skilled researchers in an area of considerable interest (the use of "big data" and alcohol-related harm).