Joint ALC & ADO Subgroup Report

EG on SIHLWA

9th meeting

24-26 March, 2010

Copenhagen, Denmark

WHO-EURO and Nordic Council of Ministers

Joint ALC & ADO subgroup report

Alcohol (+ Adolescent Health & Socially Rewarding Lifestyles)

25.3.10, WHO, Copenhagen

21 participants:

Bakonina Yulia/ Russia, BullBernt/ Norway, CaunitisJanis/ Latvia, HellmanMatilda/ Finland, JensenJohanDamgaard/ Denmark, KrivelieneGelena/ Lithuania, LeifmanHåkan/ Sweden, LiedbergiusAnna/ Sweden, LiepinaInga/ Latvia, LitvinovaOlga/ Russia, MaciejowskiMarek/ Sweden, MøllerLars/ Denmark, ParkkunenHeini/ Finland, PietruszkaMagdalena/ Poland, RenströmMaria/ Sweden, Skvorcovova Anna/ Russia, Son Irina/ Russia, Tsechkovski Mark/ Russia, Täht Triinu/ Estonia, WarpeniusKatariina/Finland, Vienonen Mikko/ Finland.

See more detailed information on ALC & ADO participants in the SIHLWA-9 full participation list.

See ALC & ADO Terms of Reference to the items in the meeting agenda SIHLWA-9

See ALC & ADO subgroup programme in SIHLWA-9 meeting documents

1. ALC & ADOIntroduction

Due to the fact that only 3persons had regisered to the ADO subgroup, the SIHLWA Coordinating Chair (Mikko Vienonen) suggested that ADO and ALC at this SIHLWA meeting form one group. This suggestion was approved. It was agreed that the amended subgroup will follow the agenda and programme of the ALC subgroup.

In ALC-ADO subgroup Dr Lars Møller (WHO) was elected as Chair and Mr Bernt Bull (Norway) as Co-chair. Dr Mikko Vienonen and Ms Anna Skvortsova were selected as rapporteurs.

The participants introduced themselves and it was agreed that one of the most important ways of influencing alcohol policies and change into less harmful use of alcohol is the way how we, the nominated experts on this issue from our countries and organizations are able to act as “change agents”, It as also felt that knowing better where each of us are in this process, can help useful contacts, support and collaboration between the meetings and also for the project preparation . Therefore, considerable time was considered for the “tour-de-table” and the secretariat was urged to get back thru e-mail to participants and prepare a summary of what is happening in our countries and organizations.

ALC and ADO groups approved the SIHLWA-8 (Riga) meeting report without changes.

2.ALC & ADOPresentations and Discussion of special themes: (these are available at

Lars Møller provided a presentation on alcohol consumption in Europe. The presentation provided a good background for our elaborations. Selected core findings are presented below:

3. ALC & ADOReview of the NDPHS Task Group on APO (Alcohol Policy) TOR

In principle, the ALC & ADO subgroups can support the drafted proposals. To have a “horizontal SIHLWA EG and task oriented Task Groups responsible for each Strategic Goal (7-11) seems rather clear. More detailed elaborations on this are recorded at the over-all SIHLWA-9 report, and hence are no longer repeated here. As to the APO-TG TOR draft, it was noted that WHO-EURO terminology speaks about “availability” of alcohol rather than “access” to alcohol. Unfortunately, in the approved NDPHS new strategy document Goal-8 uses the latter term. The discrepancy was noted and if needed/ possible we would try to seek for a terminological change in due course.

[please note that after SIHLWA-9 considerable further development for the Goal-7-11 strategic Egs and TGs were made. Summary of the outcome is best found in CSR-17 (29.-30. June 2010, Moscow). In summary, from the APO-TG and A&DP-flagship-project TG point of view the changes were that APO-TG and TOB-TG were established jointly one level higher as EG on Alcohol and Substance Abuse with Norway as Lead Partner and Russia as Co-Lead Partner. The ALC-Flagship TG under Swedish leadership remained as TG. The remaining NCD-issues under Finland’s Lead Partnership and Lihthuanian Co-Lead Partnership inherited other formerly SIHLWA-related issues. OSH-TG and IMHAP-TG will operate in collaboration with the new NCD-EG. New approved TORs are available at the CSR-17 website of NDPHS]

4. ALC & ADOFlagship-project preparation on Alcohol & Drug Prevention among youth in NDPHS region (Part of EU-BalticSea Strategy)

The group discussed about the outcome of previous day “open space” exercise. The flip-chart sheets were made available, and individual participants were urged to amend and add ideas to the sheets. The “open space” exercise is reported separately in the overall report. ALC & ADO groups considered it important that the preparation takes place in close collaboration with the new APO-EG, which will provide all support it can. Nevertheless, it was considered important that a special Task Group coordinates and leads the project planning funding application process, which to our experience will be a time consumimg and intensive task, and could not be managed by APO-EG. We discussed that it will be important that all country and organizational representatives will identify the national willingness to participate in the preparation phase, and register themselves to the team lead by Sweden.

5. ALC & ADOPAC-7 Conference and ALC (APO) TG/(EG) input

Possible Thematic reports on alcohol

The group welcomed the idea that the next PAC-7 meeting (to be hosted by WHO-EURO in Copenhagen) would focus and review the by then elaborated flagship-project ideas. We hope that by then the A&DprevY-TG has been able to proceed towards some more concrete ideas, plans and applications. However, as the whole scene and future was still open in March 2010, we felt that at this point we cannot proceed any further. We must wait for the final decisions of the CSR-17. Yet it was concluded that we need to come to the PAC-7 meeting and present to donors concrete information such as:

• Summary from a meeting with Swedish management of the project - in September will be available more:
• Information about actors involved to that - who is working in areas
• What we want to implement
• Budget (needed plus co-financing)
• Timeline, milestones

The same applies to any thematic reports on alcohol. Who-EURO has provided quite useful reports and this process will continue as the Regional committee of EURO and also the World Health Assembly have requested. Nevertheless, there should be an important role for the NDPHS APO-TG/ (EG) to interpret, adjust and advocate thematic reports for our audience, politicians, public health administrators and media. These issues need to be brought up in due course at the first meeting(s) of the renewed Egs and TGs.

6. ALC & ADOOther issues

The group discussed the “long-term problem” of ALC-sub-group not having a permanently defined Chair-Organization/country. Since 2005 the TOR of SIHLWA has indicated that the task of chairing ALC-subgroups belongs to WHO-EURO, but due to shortages of human resources, it has not fully materialized. Therefore, the SIHLWA secretariat (Coordinating Chair and ITA) have tried to replace the missing resources, but this arrangement has never been ideal. In order to be able to successfully manage the sub-group, there would need to be quite a lot of activity also in-between the official meetings. This situation also explains the fact that ADO-subgroup in fact has also been involved with alcohol related issues/prevention especially among the youth and in projects (St. Petersburg A&DprevY-project, Alcohol policy related stakeholder analysis/ NW-Russia).

Lars Møller regretted the situation. Mikko Vienonen explained that since 2009 the secretariat had actively tried to discuss the issue with WHO leaders, and had received a lot of understanding and genuine willingness to take more responsibility of ALC-subgroup, especially during the time of newly elected Regional Director Zsuzsanna Jakab. Our joint idea would be to advocate one (or several) of NDPHS member states to consider providing more human resources in the form of secondment, linked with alcohol related issues and action together with NDPHS (Goal 7-8). Official letters in this regards have been provided to WHO-EURO, and this issue will be kept on the agenda with CSR-members always when appropriate.

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SIHLWA-9 ALC participant profile (provided by members after the meeting as agreed)

- End of ALC- ADO report -