Understanding the research capacity of alcohol and other drugs services in New South Wales, Australia.

Introduction: Enhancing health system research capacity can support improved quality care. This study assessed the research capacity of public local health district (LHD) and non-government organisation (NGO) alcohol and other drug (AOD) services, at the organisational, team and individual level. Research barriers and motivators were also examined.

A qualitative study exploring young offenders' perspectives on alcohol and other drug health promotion.

Background: Drugs and alcohol can cause significant harm to individuals, families and communities. Young offenders represent an important population group, which often sport many characteristics that make them highly vulnerable to experiencing harm from drug use. For decades, research has shown the complexity of health behaviours and the need to consider consumer perspectives to respond and support different populations effectively.

Understanding the needs of local youth to inform drug and alcohol prevention and harm reduction services: A qualitative study.

Issue Addressed: Reducing drug and alcohol harm is a public health priority and the Australian government has adopted a harm minimisation approach to policy. Understanding the needs of local youth is necessary for the design of relevant prevention and harm reduction services.

Methods: Using 5 unstructured focus groups and 10 interviews involving 30 participants recruited from different settings, this study explored youth perspectives around alcohol and other drugs and the psychosocial factors that influence their substance use.

The influence of marketing on the sports betting attitudes and consumption behaviours of young men: implications for harm reduction and prevention strategies.

Background: Gambling can cause significant health and social harms for individuals, their families, and communities. While many studies have explored the individual factors that may lead to and minimise harmful gambling, there is still limited knowledge about the broader range of factors that may contribute to gambling harm. There are significant regulations to prevent the marketing of some forms of gambling but comparatively limited regulations relating to the marketing of newer forms of online gambling such as sports betting.

"I can sit on the beach and punt through my mobile phone": The influence of physical and online environments on the gambling risk behaviours of young men.

Gambling is rapidly emerging as an important public health issue, with gambling products causing considerable health and social harms to individuals, families and communities. Whilst researchers have raised concerns about online wagering environments, few studies have sought to explore how factors within different gambling environments (both online and land-based) may be influencing the wagering, and more broadly the gambling risk behaviours of young men. Using semi-structured interviews with 50 Australian men (20-37 years) who gambled on sport, we explored the ways in which online and land-based environments may be risk-promoting settings for gambling.

Microbiome and mental health in the modern environment.

A revolution in the understanding of the pathophysiology of mental illness combined with new knowledge about host/microbiome interactions and psychoneuroimmunology has opened an entirely new field of study, the "psychobiotics". The modern microbiome is quite changed compared to our ancestral one due to diet, antibiotic exposure, and other environmental factors, and these differences may well impact our brain health. The sheer complexity and scope of how diet, probiotics, prebiotics, and intertwined environmental variables could influence mental health are profound obstacles to an organized and useful study of the microbiome and psychiatric disease.

Creating symbolic cultures of consumption: an analysis of the content of sports wagering advertisements in Australia.

Background: Since 2008, Australia has seen the rapid emergence of marketing for online and mobile sports wagering. Previous research from other areas of public health, such as tobacco and alcohol, has identified the range of appeal strategies these industries used to align their products with culturally valued symbols. However, there is very limited research that has investigated the tactics the sports wagering industry uses within marketing to influence the consumption of its products and services.