Using population-based data on alcohol consumption and related harms to estimate the relative need for alcohol services in Victoria, Australia

Patterns and Characteristics of Ambulance Attendance at Heroin Overdose at a Local-Area Level in Melbourne, Australia: Implications for Service Provision

“…In the area of alcohol services, for example, there is a considerable history of the development at the local-area level of indicators of alcohol use and harm to inform service planning and delivery. 17,[23][24][25] In Victoria, this work suggests that the need for services is higher in rural, rather than metropolitan, populations. 17 Equivalent data sets are not available in relation to heroin use and harm.…”

“…17,[23][24][25] In Victoria, this work suggests that the need for services is higher in rural, rather than metropolitan, populations. 17 Equivalent data sets are not available in relation to heroin use and harm. In this article, however, we demonstrated that the use of information on a key heroin-related harm as a proxy for local-area variation in characteristics of local heroin markets has implications for service delivery at a local-area level.…”

“…10 In the absence of reliable direct measures of the prevalence of drug use, indirect measures of drug use and related harms can be used to identify potential variations in the need for drug-related services. 17 To the extent that data on nonfatal heroin overdose represent a proxy indicator of heroin market activity, they are important in the provision of heroin-related services at a local community level.…”

Development and Implementation of a Structured Intervention for Alcohol Use Disorders for Telephone Helpline Services

“…Within Australia, 20% drink alcohol at levels that place themselves at risk of harm over their lifetime (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2011) with 4% meeting criteria for alcohol dependence (Teesson et al 2010;Andrews, Henderson, & Hall, 2001). High risk alcohol consumption is associated with a significant burden of disease relating to hospitalisation (Begg, Vos, Stevenson, Stanley, & Lopez, 2007;Dietze et al 2000;Lesjak, McMahon, & Zanette, 2008), suicide and other mental illnesses (Begg et al 2007). …”

Indexes as a Metric for Drug and Alcohol Policy Evaluation and Assessment

“…A fourth approach to normalization and weighting is the use of statistical techniques (such as factor analysis and discriminant function analysis) to apply the factor loadings, or weights from the statistical analyses to derive a final score. Examples include the Israel Index (Beenstock, ), and the Treatment Need Indexes (Beshai, ; Dietze et al, ; Kim, Wurster, Williams, & Hepler, ; Kreiner et al, ; McAuliffe et al, ; Sherman et al, ; Simeone et al, ), which entered a variety of variables (such as the population rate of mortality, the number of liquor stores, and the treatment rate) into the statistical analyses. While statistically astute, in a sense allowing the data to speak for itself in terms of the variance each variable might contribute to an overall score, this approach does not actually weight the indicators against an outcome to be achieved—and contains no value judgements regarding the importance of one indicator over another.…”