Article | The effect of a minimum price per unit of alcohol in Scotland on alcohol-related ambulance call-outs: A controlled interrupted time?series analysis

Article

The effect of a minimum price per unit of alcohol in Scotland on alcohol-related ambulance call-outs: A controlled interrupted time?series analysis

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Citation

Manca F, Lewsey J, Mackay D, Angus C, Fitzpatrick D & Fitzgerald N (2024) The effect of a minimum price per unit of alcohol in Scotland on alcohol-related ambulance call-outs: A controlled interrupted time?series analysis. Addiction. https://doi.org/10.1111/add.16436

Abstract
Background and aims: On 1 May 2018, Scotland introduced a minimum unit price (MUP) of ?0.50 for alcohol, with one UK unit of alcohol being 10ml of pure ethanol. This study measured the association between MUP and changes in the volume of alcohol-related ambulance callouts in the overall population and in callouts subsets (night-time callouts and subpopulations with higher incidence of alcohol-related harm). Design: An interrupted time series (ITS) was used to measure variations in the daily volume of alcohol-related callouts. We performed uncontrolled ITS on both the intervention and control group and a controlled ITS built on the difference between the two series. Data were from electronic-patient-clinical records from the Scottish Ambulance Service. Setting and cases: Alcohol-related ambulance callouts (intervention group) and total ambulance callouts for people under 13 years old (control group) in Scotland, from December 2017 to March 2020 Measurements: Callouts were deemed alcohol-related if ambulance clinicians indicated that alcohol was a ’contributing factor’ in the callout and/or a validated Scottish Ambulance Service algorithm determined that the callout was alcohol-related. Findings: No statistically significant association in the volume of callouts was found in both uncontrolled series (step change: 0.062, 95% confidence interval [CI]: -0.012,0.0135 p=0.091; slope change: -0.001, 95%CI: -0.001, 0.1×10-3 p=0.139) and controlled (step change: -0.01, 95%CI: -0.317,0.298 p=0.951; slope change: -0.003, 95%CI: -0.008, 0.002 p=0.257). Similarly, no significant changes were found for the night-time series or for any population subgroups. Conclusions: There appears to be no statistically significant association between the introduction of minimum unit pricing for alcohol in Scotland and the volume of alcohol-related ambulance callouts. This was observed overall, across subpopulations and at night-time.

Keywords
Alcohol; ambulance; interrupted time-series; minimum unit price; natural experiment; Scotland

Journal
Addiction