Understanding the Relationship Between Alcohol Consumption and Sexual Health Outcomes in Young People in England; A Challenge for Public Health Intelligence

Reducing teenage pregnancies is an important target for achieving the United National’s Millennium Development Goal 5 –Improving maternal health. Studies from the United States indicate a strong relationship between alcohol misuse, risky sexual behaviour and teenage pregnancy. Rates of teenage pregnancy in the United Kingdom (UK) are the highest in Western Europe and rates of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in young people aged 16-24 years have risen dramatically since 1997. Adolescents in the UK are ranked in the top five of thirty countries for most measures of alcohol misuse. Furthermore, hospital admissions for alcohol-specific conditions in those aged under 18 years in England rose significantly between 2002/3 and 2009/10. There are clear health inequalities between the UK and the rest of Europe.

We recently conducted a study in England to describe the association between alcohol misuse, teenage pregnancy and STIs in young people and identify local ‘hotspots’ of overlapping risk behaviour to inform local service commissioning. Understanding the wider determinants of population health issues such as teenage pregnancy or alcohol misuse is essential for effective local public health intervention and requires the collation of public health data. However, producing valid intelligence from combining datasets is often challenging due to problems in accessing data from multiple sources, collected at different population levels and using different administrative geographies. This is the first time that analysis of teenage conception rates at a low geographical area (average population 7,200) has been carried out in England. An innovative approach was adopted to interpolate the data using geographical information systems software (ArcGIS) to provide estimated rates to enable analysis alongside alcohol misuse and sexual health data.

This presentation will describe the results of the study, present the local ‘hotspot’ analysis, and outline the innovative approach utilised to overcome challenges in producing valuable public health intelligence.