A longitudinal study of changes in tobacco and alcohol retail availability and maternal health behaviors

Methods and Data

The project will benefit from access to Scotland's world leading administrative data system which enables longitudinal linkages between health, economic and social datasets from across government departments including the National Records of Scotland and the National Health Service. The project will use an existing linked dataset bringing together data from NHS maternity records (which includes information on maternal smoking and alcohol consumption during pregnancy), Scottish census data (from the Scottish Longitudinal Study, SLS) and geographical data on the level of tobacco and alcohol availability.

The project will use a number of advanced quantitative approaches including multi-level and case-crossover longitudinal models together with directed acyclic graphs to examine how changes in retailing availability may be linked to changes in corresponding health behaviours during pregnancy. Expected research outcomes

The findings will be of considerable international interest to both academic and non-academic stakeholders and the project will produce outputs that target both groups. We anticipate around 4 published academic articles to emerge from the research targeting journals in the disciplines of epidemiology, health geography and public health. In addition, the research team will facilitate opportunities to present findings to a varied non-academic audience through existing stakeholder workshops and events with organisations including for example Public Health Scotland, Scottish parliament and advocacy organisations such as Alcohol Focus Scotland, the British Heart Foundation and Action on Smoking and Health Scotland.