Research groups

KBS Early Career Research group

The overall objective of this group is to develop and implement strategies to engage and improve services for KBS early career researchers (ECRs).

The first ECR meeting was held at the 2017 KBS annual meeting in Sheffield (UK) to collect suggestions for how to support ECRs’ career development.

The second Early Career Researchers (ECRs) Continuing Professional Development session was organised during the 2019 KBS meeting in Utrecht (Netherlands). The session focused on increasing research impact.

For information and suggestions, contact:
Giovanni Aresi (giovanni.aresi@unicatt.it)
Kate Vallance (vallance@uvic.ca)

Gender and Alcohol’s Harm to Others Project (GENAHTO)

Most alcohol research to date has focused on how drinking harms the drinker. Research on alcohol’s harms to others (AHTO) has studied primarily single or small groups of countries. GENAHTO is a new multinational study of how social, cultural, and policy contexts are related to AHTO, from the perspectives of both perpetrators and victims. The GENAHTO Project is currently funded by the U.S. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, part of the National Institutes of Health (Research Grant No. R01 AA023870). The Multiple Principal Investigators are Tom Greenfield (Alcohol Research Group/Public Health Institute, Emeryville, California), Sharon Wilsnack (University of North Dakota School of Medicine & Health Sciences, Grand Forks), and Kim Bloomfield (Aarhus University Centre for Alcohol and Drug Research, Copenhagen). Other project sites are the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (Canada), the Addiction Switzerland Research Institute (Switzerland), and the La Trobe University Centre for Alcohol Policy Research (Australia). All key personnel of the project are members of KBS.

The GENAHTO Project uses surveys in 21 countries that were part of the GENACIS Project (a previous KBS-affiliated study of gender, alcohol, and culture). The GENACIS surveys provide data from drinkers who report causing harms to other. GENAHTO also uses surveys in 16 countries (from the WHO-Thai Health Project on Alcohol’s Harms to Others and additional, independently funded AHTO surveys) that provide data from victims of AHTO. The countries surveyed vary widely in alcohol policies, drinking cultures, gender-role definitions, and socioeconomic conditions. More than 140,000 men and women, aged 15-84, participated in the GENACIS and AHTO surveys.

The major aims of the GENAHTO Project are to identify characteristics of AHTO victims and perpetrators; within-country regional differences in AHTO; and associations between national alcohol polices and individual and regional levels of AHTO. Individual-level measures include demographics, alcohol use patterns, and alcohol-related harms. Regional- and societal-level measures include socioeconomic conditions, drinking patterns, alcohol policies, gender inequality, and income inequality. We are also examining impacts of being harmed in different ways (e.g., family or financial harms, or experiencing harassment, physical aggression, or vandalism) by other drinkers of various kinds (i.e., partners, family members, friends, co-workers, and strangers). These analyses seek to understand whether or not those experiencing specific harms from such other drinkers suffer detriments to mental health and quality of life and, if so, to estimate the extent of these effects. Among the data analysis methods we are using are multi-level modeling and propensity score analyses.

GENAHTO is the first project to assess AHTO in diverse societies. Project personnel hope that Its findings can inform interventions and policies to reduce AHTO in varying cultural contexts. Additional information about GENAHTO can be found on the project website: www.genahto.org.

Gender, Alcohol, and Culture: An International Study (GENACIS)

Period: 1993-2013

GENACIS was a collaborative international project affiliated with the Kettil Bruun Society for Social and Epidemiological Research on Alcohol, and coordinated by GENACIS partners from the University of North Dakota, Aarhus University, the Alcohol Research Group/Public Health Institute, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, the University of Melbourne, and the Swiss Institute for the Prevention of Alcohol and Drug Problems.

Its objectives were: (1) to compare within countries men’s and women’s drinking patterns and drinking contexts; to compare across countries men’s and women’s drinking patterns and contexts, and gender differences in drinking patterns and contexts; (2) to compare within countries men’s and women’s alcohol-related problems, to compare across countries the prevalence of men’s and women’s alcohol problems, and gender differences in problem prevalence; (3) to compare, within countries and across countries, the experience of violence in close relationships as regards men’s and women’s drinking behaviour; (4) to compare, within countries and across countries, gender differences in social inequalities in alcohol use/abuse and the influence of social role combinations on heavy use; and (5) to analyse how societal-level factors (e.g., gender equality, drinking culture norms) predict women’s and men’s alcohol use and alcohol-related problems in various regions of Europe and elsewhere.

More than 200 scientific publications were published as part of GENACIS project.

Additional information can be found on the project website archive: https://www.kettilbruun.org/projects/genacis/.