Cigarette smoking and harmful use of alcohol are major preventable causes of early death, disease, accidents and injury in the UK. Although the health effects of smoking have been widely recognised for decades, active and passive smoking still kill over 100,000 people and cause over 160,000 new cases of illness in children each year. Half of the 10 million smokers in the UK today will be killed by their smoking unless they stop. In contrast to smoking, alcohol consumption in the UK has increased markedly in the last thirty years. Ten million people in the UK now drink alcohol to harmful levels, and alcohol causes over 15,000 deaths, 1 million hospital admissions, and accidents and violence that together cost our society more than £20 billion each year. Like the effects of smoking, these harms affect the poorest in society most. Also like tobacco, alcohol consumption is driven by very powerful multinational industries with substantial political influence. It is therefore essential to find better ways to prevent smoking and harmful use of alcohol, now and in the future, and to prevent commercial interests from undermining these actions. Much has been learnt from the successes of reducing smoking prevalence, and many successful tobacco strategies can be applied to prevent alcohol harm. However, alcohol strategies must also take account of the fact that while smoking is dangerous at all levels, low levels of alcohol consumption do not have equivalent health harms to tobacco. So while tobacco policy can be pursued with the aim of eradicating smoking from society, alcohol policy has to aim to prevent consumption to levels that cause significant harm to the user, or to others. This proposal aims to address these problems by bringing together leading tobacco and alcohol researchers to build on success in tobacco research over the past five years by creating a new research centre, the UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies (UKCTAS), to study new ways to prevent tobacco and alcohol-related harm, and promote their implementation. Since 2008 we have applied this approach in smoking prevention through the existing UK Centre for Tobacco Control Studies (UKCTCS), and achieved significant impacts on tobacco policy and practice (see www.ukctcs.org). We now propose to continue our tobacco work and to establish a major new focus on alcohol, by incorporating leading international alcohol researchers into the new Centre. Our work will aim to: 1. Understand and identify preventable reasons why people smoke or use alcohol to a harmful degree, and improve understanding of the health impacts of these behaviours 2. Understand and develop better population measures to to reduce smoking and harmful use of alcohol 3. Develop and implement better individual health interventions to prevent smoking and harmful use of alcohol 4. Develop and apply harm reduction strategies for those otherwise likely to continue to smoke or sustain harm from alcohol 5. Understand the tactics of the industry to encourage tobacco and alcohol consumption and thus undermine health policy and practice 6. Use the outcomes of our research to work, with other professional and public groups and individuals, to improve UK and international action to prevent smoking and harm from alcohol We will also aim to further develop our training and development of academic, policymaker and practitioner capacity for tobacco and alcohol work in the future, and to establish UKCTAS as a self sustaining Centre by the end of the five-year funding period. The main benefits of the Centre will be the achievement of sustained reductions in harms to individuals and society from tobacco and alcohol use.

This project builds on research on the independent fast food sector in London which has explored the potential for businesses to adopt healthier menus and catering practices and the effectiveness of healthier catering initiatives in encouraging these. A key finding from the research is the role played by local socio-economic and cultural factors in influencing business practice and the ease with which businesses are able to adopt a healthier business model. In particular businesses operating in deprived areas are very price sensitive and owner managers are reluctant to introduce healthier menus which might result in price increases and/or deter customers. Businesses were also constrained in what they could sell by the nature of the supply chain with many suppliers not stocking healthier varieties or charging premium rates for them. Nudges, such as moving salt shakers behind the counter, worked in some settings, but more research is needed to identify the contexts in which feasible behaviour change strategies are acceptable and to identify financially viable healthier business models that could be promoted, particularly in deprived areas. The aim of this project is therefore to work with public sector health officials and policy makers who are at the forefront of developing interventions in this domain. These include the Chartered Institute for Environmental Health, the Greater London Authority Food Team, and a London-wide network of environmental health officers and nutritionists and their managers. The proposed Knowledge Exchange project is focused on addressing the following four key research questions as follows: 1) What type of healthier changes might fast food businesses adopt voluntarily and what are the barriers where a greater degree of intervention may be required such as legislation or intervention with supply chains? 2) What business models involving the sale of healthier fast food work for independent outlets - particularly in deprived areas? 3) How can businesses in the supply chain be encouraged to make changes to product formulation and marketing mixes that will promote healthier product varieties? 4) What behaviour change strategies can businesses (fast food outlets and suppliers) easily incorporate without risking loss of customers and profits? To address these questions the project will undertake the following activities: a) A telephone survey of healthy catering initiatives and work with suppliers conducted elsewhere in the UK to identify good practice and lessons learnt b) Detailed interviews with fast food outlets in London to provide examples of good practice and/or trial changes, nudges etc. to enable an in-depth understanding of the business to be developed including its products/menus, market and marketing strategy, as well as barriers to the introduction of healthier changes c) Work with suppliers to encourage product reformulation and new marketing strategies designed to encourage the promotion and sale of healthier varieties of products. Outputs from the project will include a number of resources for public sector practitioners including: i) The development of a number of case studies of businesses that have attempted to adopt new business models to include menu and product reformulation to offer financially viable healthier catering. ii) Suggested healthier behaviour change strategies or 'nudges' that businesses can be encouraged to adopt. iii) A guide for suppliers to include recommendations for product, packaging, and marketing strategies that are likely to lead to the sale and purchase of healthier products and portions. iv) A briefing paper on key recommendations for policy v) These all to form part of a web-based good practice toolkit located on the CIEH website Dissemination events, held in conjunction with the GLA, and the CIEH will promote the toolkit to practitioners and policy makers throughout the UK.

In England, a fifth of all households live in the private rented sector. Recent exploratory research in England has identified a 'shadow' private rented sector where activities such as landlord fraud, letting property not designed as residential accommodation, threatening behaviour and violent illegal eviction are commonplace. Tenants at the very bottom end of the rented sector are vulnerable as a consequence of poverty, may well have experiences of street homelessness and/or 'sofa-surfing' that reflect and cause mental health issues, and may have an uncertain migrant status and 'no recourse to public funds' and so are reliant on precarious housing and may be unwilling to engage with statutory authorities. Furthermore, there is evidence that the private rented sector is a site for organised criminal activity including human trafficking, modern slavery and cannabis cultivation. In response to this challenging landscape, the proposed study will: - Undertake a systematic examination of criminal landlord behaviour and links to other criminal activity; - Work with local authorities and the police across Yorkshire and the Humber to explore effective interventions to disrupt criminal behaviours and effect successful prosecutions; - Establish the number of prosecutions for different types of landlord-related crime, examine the obstacles to prosecution; and consider how decisions are made about sentencing; and - Work co-productively with the victims of landlord crime and with third sector organisations to arrive at a better understand of how this type of crime is experienced and the kinds of support that charitable and statutory authorities should seek to develop. The project will bring together academics working in housing, housing enforcement, crime and policing interventions and housing-related prosecutions, across the Universities of York, Sheffield and Teesside. The research will be based in Yorkshire and the Humber and work with local authorities and police forces across four regional districts, as well as a Yorkshire-based housing charity. Elements of the research will be co-productive: that is, academics will work with practitioners within local authorities, the police and the criminal justice system. The study will also use co-production methods to work with victimized tenants to explore their experiences and define routes by which their narratives can be presented to relevant stakeholder audiences to help shape best practice guidance. The research aims to ensure that findings and recommendations are relevant and lead directly to improved policing interventions. Project advisory group members will include senior civil servants, relevant professional bodies and training agencies, and from the outset the project will explore ways to ensure that learning is disseminated nationally.