Tag Archives: Alcohol

A risky problem: what can keep young people away from alcohol and cigarettes?

Smoking and drinking among very young people has been declining in recent years, but it’s not all good news. There is still a lot of public health concern around the numbers of older children who are consuming alcohol and cigarettes, as these are the young people most likely to come to harm as a result of drinking too much. Their risky behaviours are also likely to persist and intensify into adulthood. So what factors might prevent a young person from smoking and drinking in the first place? New research published in BMC Public Health shows that levels of happiness among children and awareness of the risks may be key to success. Lead author on the research, Noriko Cable, explains more. 

According to Public Health England (PHE), alcohol is now the leading risk factor for ill-health, early mortality and disability among those aged 15 to 49 in England. It wants to “prevent and reduce” the harms caused by alcohol. It also has ambitions to create “a tobacco-free generation” by 2025.

The most recent figures from the Survey of Smoking, Drinking and Drug Use Among Young People in England show that around 90,000 children aged between 11 and 15 are regular smokers and 240,000 have drunk alcohol in the past week. These figures are the lowest they have been since the survey began in 1982.

However, recent research published in BMC Public Health by colleagues at UCL, shows that around one in seven 11 year-olds is drinking alcohol and that having peers who consume alcohol makes them four times more likely to drink that their peers who don’t. We also know that smokers start young, two thirds of them before the age of 18.

So we wanted to examine more closely the sorts of things that might drive young people away from cigarettes and alcohol. In this way we hope to arm policy makers, health practitioners and those working directly with or caring for children and young people with information that can help with the development of clear policies and interventions.

Protective role

We focused on three factors thought to play a protective role in preventing young people from starting to smoke and drink. These were: their awareness of the harms, their well-being or happiness and how supportive their networks of friends and family were.

Information came from Understanding Society, a large UK survey, which, in addition to collecting a wide range of social and economic information from everyone in the household aged 16 and over, has a special self-completion questionnaire for 10-15 year olds. Our sample contained 1,729 boys and girls.

We examined answers at two time points (approximately a year apart) to questions about their smoking and drinking. With these two sets of information, we were able to see whether they had started but then stopped smoking or drinking, whether they were persistent users of cigarettes and alcohol, whether they had started between the first and second surveys (initiation) or whether they had not smoked or drunk alcohol at either point.

The children were also asked about how happy they were with different aspects of their lives, including how they were getting on at school, how they felt about their appearance, family and friends and life in general.

On a scale of 1-4, the children were asked to rate how risky they thought different levels of smoking and drinking were. They were also asked how many supportive friends they had; friends they could confide in.

Harm awareness and happiness

Nearly 70 per cent of the study participants described themselves as persistent non-users of alcohol and cigarettes, and around 13 per cent categorized themselves as persistent users. Persistent non-users scored highest on harm awareness and happiness tests compared to the other groups.

About 8 per cent of the study group labelled themselves as ex-users and about 13 per cent had started using alcohol or cigarettes between the first and second time they completed the survey. Young people aged 10 to 12 were more likely to be in the persistent non-use group, whereas participants aged 13 and above were more likely to be in the persistent user and initiation groups.

We were surprised that while, for most young people, knowledge of the potential and actual harms of alcohol and smoking was linked with them never drinking or smoking, for some it seemed to be associated with them starting to drink or smoke. It is possible that positive expectations from drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes may, in some way, have overridden their awareness of what harm they could do.

The happier the young person was, and more aware of the harms of alcohol and cigarettes, the more likely they were never to drink or smoke. Having supportive friends to confide in did not play a role in preventing adolescents from using alcohol or cigarettes.

Promoting happiness and harms

So it seems that promoting young people’s happiness and well-being and making them aware of the harms of smoking and drinking may be key to keeping them away from alcohol and cigarettes. In terms of possible timings for information and interventions, another takeaway from the study might be that working with children between the ages of 10 and 12, before they start trying cigarettes and alcohol, could be important.

Because the information used in this study is self-reported, we need to interpret the findings with caution, but they do suggest that making adolescents aware of alcohol and smoking related harm can be helpful in preventing them from engaging in risky health behaviors.

Colleagues at the Centre are now getting to grips with the new age 14 data from the Millennium Cohort Study and, in collaboration with Mentor, a charity working on the ground in schools to tackle alcohol and drug abuse, are hoping to develop our growing body of evidence in this area that will help formulate policies and activities to make some of Public Health England’s ambitions around smoking and alcohol a reality.

Further information

What could keep young people away from alcohol and cigarettes? Findings from the UK Household Longitudinal Study is research by Noriko Cable, Maria Francisca Roman Mella and Yvonne Kelly and is published in BMC Public Health.

 

Reducing harm from alcohol consumption

Child of our Time editor Yvonne Kelly has shared her latest research findings on very young drinkers with policy makers, senior health professionals and third sector groups.

Yvonne was  part of a high profile panel presenting research and taking questions from MPs and others with an interest in the creation of a strategy to reduce harm from alcohol consumption.

The event, organised by The All-Party Parliamentary Health Group and CLOSER (the UK Longitudinal Studies Consortium), comes as a recent report from Public Health England stated that among those aged 15 to 49 in England, alcohol is now the leading risk factor for ill-health, early mortality and disability and the fifth leading risk factor for ill health across all age groups.

It has also been acknowledged that the harmful effects of heavy alcohol consumption go well beyond the implications for public health, presenting both serious economic and social challenges: current estimates of the annual cost to society of alcohol consumption range from 1.3% to 2.7% of annual GDP. In addition, around half of all violent incidents involving adults are alcohol-related.

Photo credit: Jes 

You can find more articles about Yvonne’s research on young people and alcohol by typing ‘alcohol’ into our blog Search bar.

Sugar-coating the childhood obesity problem

Child obesity figures appear to be on the rise again, causing much concern after earlier signs they had levelled off.  The proportion of  10- and 11-year-olds who were obese in 2015-16 was 19.8 percent, up 0.7 percent on the year before. There was a rise of 0.2 percent among four- and five-year-olds. The announcement comes as researchers at the ESRC International Centre for Lifecourse Studies at UCL have been looking in detail at how and when children become overweight. The team has also been asking whether children who are overweight are more likely to go on to smoke and drink alcohol and if their mental health suffers as they become adolescents. Yvonne Kelly explains the research findings, and considers their implications for the Government’s recent strategy for tackling the childhood obesity epidemic.

The Government’s much-awaited and much-debated childhood obesity strategy was published in August. In the end, it was less comprehensive than had been anticipated, less draconian too. It focuses on two things – reducing sugar consumption and increasing physical activity. But will it be effective in reversing this worrying obesity trend among our children?

It’s fair to say we don’t fully understand what things influence whether, when and why a child might become overweight. Research to date has shown three distinct weight pathways for children: a healthy BMI throughout childhood; becoming overweight during childhood and being overweight/obese throughout childhood.

Previous research has also shown that the child’s mother’s weight, smoking in pregnancy, mental health and other social and economic factors have some link to childhood obesity. But the evidence is far from complete and, where a child’s own mental health is concerned, it’s not at all clear which way the association works.

To try to get a clearer picture of all these things, our research looked at the BMI paths of the participants in the Millennium Cohort Study, which has tracked the lives of nearly 20,000 children born between 2000-2002. We used data collected at birth, 9 months, age 3, 5, 7 and 11.

Once we had established who was on which BMI path, we were able to look at what factors were at play in their lives and to see whether a tendency to overweight and obesity was an indication that a child would go on to face mental health difficulties in early adolescence or start smoking and drinking.

Four pathways to obesity

The BMI data for the 17,000 children we were able to look at for our study showed four distinct groups of children. More than 80 per cent of them stayed on an average non-overweight path throughout their childhood – we call it the ‘stable’ path. There was a small group (0.6 percent) of children who were obese at age 3 but were then in the stable group by age 7. We call them the the ‘decreasing’ group. There was a ‘moderate increasing group’ (13.1 percent) where children were not overweight at age 3 but whose BMIs increased throughout childhood into the overweight (but not obese) range. Finally we had a ‘high increasing’ group of children (2.5 percent) who were obese at age 3 and whose BMIs continued to increase.

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Girls were 30 percent more likely to be in the ‘moderate increasing’ group than boys and were half as likely to be on the ‘decreasing’ path. Indian, Pakistani and Black African children were up to two times more likely to be on the ‘moderate increasing’ path whilst Pakistani, Black Caribbean and Black African children were up to three times more likely to belong to the ‘high increasing’ group.

The wealthiest children were least likely to be in the ‘moderate increasing’ BMI group and children of mums who smoked during pregnancy were up to two times as likely to belong to increasing BMI groups. Children with overweight mums were most likely to be on the moderate and high increasing paths.

Children on the moderate and high increasing paths were less likely to have regular family routines – they were more likely to skip breakfast or have non-regular bedtime schedules. Interestingly, however, no strong links emerged with some of the things more readily linked with childhood obesity such as sugary drinks and snacks, watching TV and lack of physical activity such as sports, the main focus of the newly published childhood obesity strategy.

Overweight factors

So it seems quite a large range of factors influence the likelihood of a child becoming overweight or obese over the first decade of their life. On top of this, being overweight or obese would also seem to point to a less happy and fulfilling early adolescence and a tendency to explore risky behaviours like smoking and drinking.

Although our research did not show a clear link with sugary drinks and snacks, there are nevertheless some compelling arguments for reducing the sugar intake of our children. These are not only related to problems of obesity, but to wider issues including the major issue of tooth decay and associated emergency hospital admissions. There is also increasing evidence of the ‘addictive’ nature of sugar with research suggesting that it stimulates a sort of ‘reward path’ in certain centres of the brain meaning that the more we have the more we want. It has been shown that people who reduce their sugar intake tend to crave it less.

Where sugar taxes have been introduced in other countries (Mexico, France, Denmark, South Africa amongst others), the intervention has been shown to help reduce the consumption of sugary drinks. As yet, there is no evidence that it helps reduce BMI and tackle obesity, but it’s argued it will take time for us to see an effect on whole populations.

Disadvantaged families

It is hard to predict how much impact the voluntary rather than mandatory reduction in sugar content of drinks and snacks agreed in the strategy will have. As for the sugar tax that will be introduced in two years’ time, there remain concerns that disadvantaged families more likely to purchase and consume sugary goods than their better off counterparts will be hardest hit. Policy makers will need to think hard about how any negative consequences of this might be counteracted.

Our research shows clearly that when it comes to the likelihood of a child becoming overweight or obese in the first decade of their life, there are many more influences than just sugar. Those influences are at play in families even before our children are born.

Helping pregnant women to stop smoking and maintain a healthy weight, making sure all young children have healthy eating and sleeping routines would seem to be key, together with targeted support for the ethnic and social groups identified as being most at risk.

Further information and resources

BMI development and early adolescent psychosocial well-being: UK Millennium Cohort Study is research by Yvonne Kelly, Praveetha Patalay, Scott Montgomery, and Amanda Sacker. The work, published in Pediatrics, is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.

Media coverage

Photo credit: Kim Stromstad

Young drinkers: using evidence to prevent alcohol abuse

Research by Child of our Time Editor Yvonne Kelly on 11 year-old drinking has caught the eye of Mentor, a charity working to build resilience among young people to prevent alcohol and drug misuse. The charity’s CEO, Michael O’Toole is now looking to collaborate with Yvonne in future research that will take a look a first look at data from the Millennium Cohort Study in the Autumn. In this episode of the Child of our Time podcast, Michael explains what Mentor is doing, why research based evidence is so important to the charity and how he hopes it will help prevent alcohol abuse among young children in the future.

Photo credit: Joseph Choi

 

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Alcohol – who is drinking or drunk age 11?

Child of our Time editor, Professor Yvonne Kelly was among a group of experts looking at drinking behaviour across the life course this week. She presented her recent thought-provoking work on 11 year-olds and drinking at a seminar for policy makers and third sector workers on alcohol and health,  organised by the ESRC International Centre for Lifecourse Studies at UCL.

The talk shared findings from her research on 11 year-olds in the Millennium Cohort Study who had ever drunk alcohol or been drunk. It also explored links with a range of family and social factors including other risky behaviours such as smoking and truancy.

Listen to her talk and see her slides.

Drunkenness and heavy drinking among 11 year olds – Findings from the UK Millennium Cohort Study is research by Yvonne Kelly, Annie Britton, Noriko Cable, Amanda Sacker and Richard G. Watt

What influences 11-year-olds to drink? Findings from the Millennium Cohort Study is research by Yvonne Kelly, Alice Goisis, Amanda Sacker, Noriko Cable, Richard G Watt and Annie Britton and is published in BMC Public Health.

Being drunk – aged 11

Better understanding why very young people start drinking has been a recent focus for the team at the ESRC International Centre for Lifecourse Studies at UCL. Research published earlier this year by the team showed that one in seven 11 year-olds said they had drunk alcohol and indicated strong ties with having friends who drank and also mums who drank. Now the researchers, led by Yvonne Kelly, have taken the work a step further to see which 11 year-olds are binge drinking or getting drunk. The work will be presented next month at an event  for those interested in the links between alcohol and health. 

Young people who drink heavily do worse at school, are more likely to engage in other risky behaviours such as smoking and taking drugs and die earlier than their non drinking peers. That’s been shown. But when we talk about young people, we are mostly referring to people in their late teens and early 20s.

There has been little research looking at drinking among very young adolescents, nor has much been done to look at what factors influence heavy drinking in our children and young people.

Closing the evidence gap

Our work using the Millennium Cohort Study has gone some way to closing that gap in the evidence we need to help us gain a clearer picture of just who is drinking alcohol at a very young age and what might be behind that.

Having looked at how widespread the problem might be, how family and friends fit into the picture and how 11 year-olds perceive the risks, we wanted to dig a little more deeply and focus more closely on the group of children who are binge drinking and getting drunk.

With a study as large as the Millennium Cohort Study, we have detailed information on more than 11,000 children. This means we can look at the individual and family factors connected to the issue in a meaningful and robust way.

It was reassuring to find that only 1.2 per cent (around 120) of 11 year-olds in the study reported having been drunk, with 0.6 per cent (60) of them saying they had drunk 5 or more alcoholic drinks in a single episode.

Many would argue though, that, given the serious health consequences associated with drinking at a young age, the fact that one in every hundred of UK 11 year-olds has been drunk at some point is still a matter of considerable concern.

Who is drunk at 11?

So who amongst our 11 year-old children is getting drunk? Our analysis showed that boys were twice as likely as girls to report being drunk, as were children with social and emotional problems. Truanting children were six times more likely and smokers 15 times more likely to report heavy drinking.

Interesting to us was the fact that neither mum’s nor dad’s drinking seemed to have any influence here. This was interesting in its own right, but also because our earlier research showed quite a strong link between 11 year-olds who drank any alcohol at all and mums who drank moderately or heavily. Heavy drinking was, however, reported by children who said they did not have a close relationship with their mum.

A link that did stay strong as we dug further into this question of who drinks heavily and gets drunk, was that with friends who drank. In other words, children who had friends who drank alcohol were 5 times more likely to get drunk themselves than those children who did not have drinking friends.

Perception of risk

The children we looked at were considerably less likely to get drunk if they believed strongly that drinking 1-2 alcoholic drinks each day could be harmful. So, a heightened perception of the potential harms of drinking alcohol were key here.

Our findings seem to mirror those of a recent school-based survey of 11-13 year olds in the UK, which reported 0.4 per cent had binge drunk. They also seem to point to the fact that heavy drinking in this age group is most likely to occur in peer group settings.

As the Millennium Cohort Study continues to track these children in years to come, we will gain an even clearer understanding of the consequences of heavy drinking at such a young age.

For all those concerned with the health and wellbeing of children today and in the future, there are some pointers here about areas for focus in tackling the problem including helping children understand the potential harms and empowering them to say no to alcohol regardless of any putative benefits they or their friends might perceive.

Request an invitation to the Alcohol and Health policy seminar which takes place on June 21, 2016.

Photo credit: Thom Sanders

 

 

Who are the 11 year old drinkers?

The number of young people who say they drink alcohol has recently fallen. But the teenage years are still the time most of us start drinking. Drinking can be linked to other types of risky adolescent behaviour and, later in life, alcohol remains a major risk factor for illnesses such as heart attacks, cancer and diabetes. Most research to date has focused on the later teenage years, but a new study published in BMC  Public Health has taken a close look at children in early adolescence. Professor Yvonne Kelly at the ESRC International Centre for Lifecourse Studies at UCL examines the circumstances in which children first explore alcohol and what this can tell public health professionals keen to counter the most damaging effects.  

The Department of Health guidelines are clear; children aged 16 or less should not drink alcohol. But they do and many parents fear absolute prohibition will lead to secret drinking and a loss of trust in the relationship. It would appear to be common sense, too, that a child drinking a small amount of watered-down wine with a family meal would be likely to develop quite different later adolescent behaviours to a child swigging vodka with friends in a bus shelter. Common sense it might be, but there has been little robust research around this.

The broad aim of our research was to examine influences on the emergence of exploratory drinking at the start of adolescence. We focused on two specific questions:

  1. Are parents’ and friends’ drinking important influences on drinking among 11 year-olds?
  2. What is the role of perceptions of risk, expectancies towards alcohol, parental supervision and family relationships on the likelihood of 11 year-olds drinking?

We made use of the detailed and rich data available in the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS), which has followed the lives of nearly 20,000 children born between 2000-2002.

Drinking habits

At age 11, just under 14% of MCS children said they drank alcohol. Based on their own reported drinking frequency, parents were grouped into three categories: non-drinkers, light to moderate drinkers and heavy or binge drinkers. Around 20% of mums and 15% of dads were non-drinkers. Around 60% of mums and dads were light or moderate drinkers. About a quarter of dads and just over a fifth of mums were heavy or binge drinkers. When asked whether their friends drank, 78% of MCS children said “no”.

The children were also asked about other risky behaviours such as smoking or truanting and what they felt about their family. These factors were taken into account to enable us to focus in on the effect of parents’ or friends’ drinking.

Compared to children whose mums did not drink, children whose mums were light or moderate drinkers had a 60% increased risk of drinking at 11, while those whose mums were heavy or binge drinkers had an 80% increased risk. A father’s drinking appeared to have about half as much impact, regardless of whether he was a light to moderate or heavy/binge drinker. Children who said their friends drank were more than four times as likely to drink themselves as those children with friends who didn’t drink.

Home life and perceptions of alcohol

When we looked at home life, predictably those children who reported being happy were less likely to drink than those who reported frequent family battles. Where there were low levels of parental supervision combined with a dad who drank heavily, the risk of the child drinking was, again, higher.

A child’s view about the harms of alcohol also seemed to be an important factor. The more dangerous a child thought alcohol to be, the less likely they were to drink. Children who did not see drinking alcohol as a risky activity and who also had a heavy drinking mum were much more likely to be drinking alcohol at 11.

It is not possible to make statements regarding cause and effect with this sort of study, but the numbers do show us a strong association between 11 year-olds drinking and their friends’ and mothers’ behaviour. Family relationships, perceptions of risk and expectations regarding alcohol are important, too, as are some more general characteristics of the family unit.

So, what does this tell us about the risks of drinking at 11 and how to counter those risks? The fact that likely causes of early drinking are multiple, means that counter measures need, similarly, to be aimed at a number of different aspects of a child’s life. One size will not fit all.

Advice, information and guidance

Children certainly need to have a better understanding of the risks involved in drinking. Schools and parents are clearly well placed to provide the best advice, information and guidance to children of this age, but these robust new findings can play an important role in helping to shape the focus of those discussions.

Whilst the vast majority of children at the age of eleven are yet to explore alcohol, investigating in more detail the context in which children drink – who they drink with, where, when, what they drink and how they acquire alcohol – could help inform effective policy and alcohol harm prevention strategies to mitigate the risk associated with drinking as a young person.

Public health policy should take all these factors into account, driving measures that would address parents and peer groups, popular perceptions, marketing and advertising, pricing, availability and the enforcement of age restrictions.

Further information

What influences 11-year-olds to drink? Findings from the Millennium Cohort Study is research by Yvonne Kelly, Alice Goisis, Amanda Sacker, Noriko Cable, Richard G Watt and Annie Britton and is published in BMC Public Health.

  • Read the press release and access contact details if you are a member of the media
  • Listen to Yvonne’s talk on the research at a recent ICLS Policy Seminar
  • Find out about forthcoming ICLS Policy seminar on Tuesday, 21 June 2016, focusing on what evidence longitudinal/lifecourse studies can bring to the current debate on “safe” drinking levels and what drives people to start, stop or cut back on drinking. Email icls@ucl.ac.uk for more information and to be added to the mailing list.

Photo credit: Jes

 

Alcohol and adolescence: who’s drinking age 11?

Who is drinking alcohol at age 11? And what are the links with parents’ and friends drinking habits? See the slides and listen to Professor Yvonne Kelly talk at an ESRC Centre for Lifecourse Studies Policy Seminar about her research, Alcohol and adolescence: exploratory drinking in 11 year-olds, which makes use of data from the Millennium Cohort Study.

Photo credit: Jes