Summarising the impacts of the Queensland Alcohol‐related violence and Night‐Time Economy (QUANTEM) project

Abstract

This closing commentary to the special section presents an overview of the Queensland Alcohol-related violence and Night-Time Economy Monitoring evaluation findings in comparison to those from other jurisdictions where similar interventions have been implemented (such as Sydney and Newcastle), and especially with previous studies that have used similar evaluation methodologies, such as the Dealing with Alcohol and the Night-Time Economy study. Overall, the articles documented promising reductions in alcohol-related harm, building on the existing evidence base for multi-pronged interventions in entertainment districts. Importantly, this is the first comprehensive investigation to also look at impacts on nightlife-related business and findings demonstrated, that there were improvements for many businesses. There are substantial policy implications for Queensland and other jurisdictions (nationally and globally) wanting to reduce late night alcohol-related harm in entertainment districts.

Patron banning policy and practice in Queensland, Australia: key informant perspectives

“…Each scanner is networked through central servers and the details of any banned person are downloaded to all venues operating a scanner within around ten minutes of the ban being imposed. The QUANTEM project undertook an evaluation of the TAFV policy in 15 SNPs (Miller et al 2017(Miller et al , 2019, and findings have been reported within a range of papers (Carah et al 2021;Ferris et al 2021;Miller et al 2021b;Taylor et al 2019).…”

How public health teams navigate their different roles in alcohol premises licensing: ExILEnS multistakeholder interview findings

“…39 The number of people entering licensed venues and moving through night-time precincts remained stable, and in some areas a greater diversification of entertainment offerings was observed. 40,41 This highlights the importance of documenting impacts beyond assaults and injuries, for example including impacts on nightlife and trade, in future studies.…”

Addressing alcohol-related harms in the local night-time economy: a qualitative process evaluation from a complex systems perspective

“… 20–22 That study found that NTE regulation (that includes reduced trading hours) reduced alcohol harms without reducing the number of patrons, scale or diversity of NTEs and occurred while the number of alcohol licensed venues increased. 17 18 62 …”

“…The Queensland Alcohol-related violence and Night-Time Economy (QUANTEM) project provides an example of how such a study could be conducted, using multiple data sources to measure impacts on alcohol-related health and social harms and local economies. [17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24] Furthermore, the ExILEnS study and research stemming from the NIHR School for Public Health Research alcohol programme demonstrate how impacts of local alcohol policies have been evaluated in UK contexts. 13 15 16 25 A well-theorised, robust impact evaluation of the LNL is overdue.…”

“…For example, much of the evidence came from a narrow range of countries (particularly Australia and the USA) raising concerns about wider generalisablity and few studies examined effects of changing temporal alcohol availability (hours of sale, including opening and closing hours). A number of studies from the UK and elsewhere have evaluated local-level regulation of alcohol availability and NTEs 1 13–24. In England, changes to alcohol licensing systems that included new discretionary powers for local authorities (LAs) have been the focus of recent and ongoing research 13–16 25…”