A thematic meeting of the Kettil Bruun Society on Public Health and the Global Governance of Alcohol will be held 30 September – 3 October 2019 in Melbourne, Australia.
A formal call for papers for the meeting will be made in late January 2019. In the meantime, please save the date.
Website: https://law.unimelb.edu.au/alcohol-globalgov-2019
About the Conference
Urgent action is needed by governments to control the marketing, labelling and availability of alcohol given the growing evidence about the burden of disease and premature mortality associated with alcohol consumption. But alcohol needs to be seen not just as a domestic issue, but as a global health problem. The sources of the harm (especially in the form of global alcohol industry conduct) cross borders, nearly all countries experience the range of harms from alcohol consumption, and the potential solutions to these problems increasingly require international innovation and solidarity through global governance. In this context, ‘global governance’ refers to the laws, rules, norms, institutions, processes and practices of state and non-state actors across national borders relating to alcohol.
This meeting seeks to examine how global and regional governance currently contributes — and could contribute more in the future — to the control of alcohol for public health purposes. The meeting also intends to investigate how global and regional governance arrangements, especially through trade and investment law, limit the domestic regulation of alcohol, and options for remedying this situation. Contributions relevant to these topics are sought from those involved in social, political science and policy research and in public health legal research.
The meeting will follow the format of other KBS thematic meetings, with most of those attending contributing papers for discussion at the meeting. The meeting will thus focus on the presentation and discussion of pre-circulated papers that are, as yet, unpublished. This format provides an opportunity for authors to get early input and peer review ahead of submitting a paper for publication. It is expected that selected papers, after revision, will be published in thematic sections or issues of journals.
Researchers will be invited to submit abstracts by 1 April 2019. A meeting website, including for the submission of abstracts, will be available by late January 2019.
The workshop is organised by the Centre for Alcohol Policy Research and the Centre for Health Law and Society at La Trobe University and the Melbourne Law School at The University of Melbourne. The organising committee for the meeting is:
- Professor Robin Room, Centre for Alcohol Policy Research, Latrobe University
- Dr Deborah Gleeson, Department of Public Health and Centre for Health Law and Society, Latrobe University
- Dr Trish Hepworth, Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education
- Paula O’Brien, Melbourne Law School, The University of Melbourne
- Clare Slattery, McCabe Centre for Law and Cancer
Please direct queries about the meeting to Paula O’Brien (obrienpl@unimelb.edu.au).
The meeting receives support from VicHealth and the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education.