The STAD in Europe (SiE) project aims to tackle heavy episodic drinking by restricting the availability of alcohol in four drinking environments: licensed premises in nightlife settings; festivals; public environments, such as streets, parks and beaches; and, private environments, such as the home.
One of the most successful prevention strategies targeting binge drinking is STAD, developed in Stockholm, Sweden. The main components of STAD are community mobilization, a training course in responsible beverage service, and stricter enforcements. STAD is one of the few community action programme’s that has shown significant effects on the reduction of overserving of alcohol, decrease of underage drinking in city areas, and the reduction of alcohol-related aggression. STAD has even proven to be very cost-effective. Moreover, an approach based on environmental interventions is expected to be especially effective for lower socio-economic classes.
The SiE project will involve the development and piloting of interventions designed to tackle heavy episodic drinking in young people in seven pilot areas across seven countries; Czech Republic, Germany, The Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The interventions will be developed based on four different models, covering each of the four drinking settings. The interventions will be underpinned by the STAD approach to prevention and be tailored to each country, taking into consideration local drinking cultures, and harm prevention priorities and policies.
The SiE project will involve a process and outcome evaluation of the development and piloting of the interventions across the seven countries. Evaluation findings will be collated and shared in various formats at country and European levels, and will inform the development of a manual about reducing binge drinking and related harms in European environments. Learning from the development and piloting of the interventions across European countries is critical to understanding if and how the principles and successes of the STAD project can be replicated, both across European settings and in different drinking environments.