Quantitative tools and measurements for assessing the implementation of regulatory policies in reducing alcohol consumption and alcohol-related harms: A scoping review.

Issues: Implementation of alcohol control policy is a global priority as alcohol contributes to negative individual health and societal impacts. However, there are no available reviews that comprehensively provide tools and measurements for assessing the implementation of alcohol control policy. This study reviews tools and measurements for assessing alcohol policy implementation. Policies considered include alcohol pricing and taxation, alcohol marketing control, physical availability control and drink-driving policy.

Approach: We conducted a scoping review from Scopus, Web of Science and the World Health Organization's website. We included studies on policy implementation for the four most effective prevention policies published worldwide between 2000 and 2021.

Key Findings: The search yielded 11,654 articles and these were narrowed down to 39 included studies. Of these 39 studies, almost half assessed the implementation of a drink-driving policy (n = 19), followed multipolicy (n = 12) and physical availability control (n = 8). There was no single study assessing policy implementation of pricing and taxation or alcohol marketing control. The majority of the studies were conducted in high-income countries (n = 31). Globally, there is no standardised tool or guidelines for measuring the policy implementation of these four policies. The tools for measuring policy implementation mostly focused on a single policy, and few covered multiple policies.

Implications: We recommend developing standardised tools and measurements to monitor policy implementation across multiple policies at country levels.

Conclusion: This review highlighted a lack of comprehensive and standardised tools to assess policy implementation and the limited number of studies on alcohol policy implementation in low- and middle-income countries.