Alcohol policy in Chile: a systematic review of policy developments and evaluations
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Abstract
Aims
To comprehensively review enacted and proposed alcohol laws and existing impact evaluations of national alcohol policies in Chile.
Methods
We searched enacted laws in the Chilean National Library of Congress, proposed laws in the websites of the House of Deputies and Senate and impact evaluations in PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, Scielo, JSTOR, Epistemonikos and OpenGrey from inception to February 2019. Eligibility criteria included enacted laws and proposed laws on national alcohol policies and research studies evaluating the impact of national alcohol policies. One author screened enacted laws and proposed laws; two authors independently screened research records. We included any national alcohol policy intervention and classified policies according to 10 World Health Organization (WHO) alcohol policy domains. We used the Cochrane EPOC Review Group criteria to assess risk of bias of research records. We registered the review protocol in PROSPERO, registration record CRD42016050156.
Results
We identified and screened 229 enacted laws, 138 proposed laws and 1538 research records. Of these, 72 enacted laws, 118 proposed laws and three research articles were eligible for synthesis. We found enacted policies in all WHO alcohol policy domains. Regarding the most cost-effective policies, Chile has made limited use of taxation, has not regulated alcohol marketing and has weakened alcohol availability regulation. We found a large number of proposed laws, 79% of which would strengthen alcohol control. The few impact evaluation studies examined drink-driving policies and found a short-term reduction of alcohol-related injuries and deaths.
Conclusions
Chile has enacted alcohol policies in all World Health Organization policy domains, but has not adopted policies with highest likely cost-effectiveness. Only the impact of drink-driving policies has been evaluated.
To read more articles by Dr. Francisca Román, please visit her ISSUP profile as a researcher at: https://www.issup.net/node/14459
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