Digital interventions in alcohol and drug prevention, treatment and recovery: Systematic maps of international research and interventions available in England

Executive Summary Background Digital interventions in alcohol and drug prevention, treatment and recovery have the potential to overcome barriers faced by non-digital interventions. However, we lack a clear understanding of the types of digital interventions that have been evaluated and where gaps in the evidence base exist. We also need to understand the effectiveness of different types of digital alcohol and drug interventions for various population groups. Further, we do not know which digital alcohol and drug interventions are being used in England, and whether the interventions in use align with those that have been evaluated. Research questions To address the above concerns, we sought to address the following questions: • RQ1: What is the possible range of digital alcohol and drug interventions? • RQ2: Which types of digital alcohol and drug interventions are currently available for use in England? • RQ3: What systematic reviews provide findings for digital alcohol and drug intervention strategies within a prevention/treatment/recovery pathway? • RQ4: Which types of digital alcohol and drug interventions have been evaluated in primary research? • RQ5: To what extent does the evaluation evidence overlap with digital alcohol and drug interventions that are currently available for use in England? • RQ6: What evidence is there that certain types of digital alcohol and drug interventions are (cost-) effective or ineffective for specific population groups or in particular contexts? This report covers our findings in relation to questions RQ1 - RQ5. Based on these findings we also provide suggestions as to what could be the focus of further work to answer RQ6. Methods To address RQ1 an initial typology was drafted, adapting and building on existing typologies of digital interventions. Through this process it became clear to OHID/PHE that a pathway, presenting a route through services, with different types of interventions recommended for use at different times would be more helpful than a typology of intervention characteristics. This pathway was then developed by OHID/PHE and trialled by the research team, with refinements made over time with discussions between the study team and PHE. To address RQ2 we contacted people in England in 2019, who were involved in developing, commissioning, prescribing, recommending or evaluating digital alcohol/drug interventions. Using an online survey, we asked them to describe the interventions they were involved with. To address RQ3, RQ4 and RQ5 we conducted systematic searching and screening to identify and describe existing systematic reviews (RQ3) and primary studies (RQ4). Included systematic reviews were appraised for quality and detailed information was extracted from full reports. For primary studies we extracted basic details using the information contained within the title and abstract. The pathway developed for RQ1 was employed to code and describe the nature of available interventions (RQ2), systematic reviews (RQ3) and primary studies (RQ4). EPPI-Mapper software was used to produce online interactive maps to visually display the findings

Ghosts of Yellowstone: Multi-Decadal Histories of Wildlife Populations Captured by Bones on a Modern Landscape

Natural accumulations of skeletal material (death assemblages) have the potential to provide historical data on species diversity and population structure for regions lacking decades of wildlife monitoring, thereby contributing valuable baseline data for conservation and management strategies. Previous studies of the ecological and temporal resolutions of death assemblages from terrestrial large-mammal communities, however, have largely focused on broad patterns of community composition in tropical settings. Here, I expand the environmental sampling of large-mammal death assemblages into a temperate biome and explore more demanding assessments of ecological fidelity by testing their capacity to record past population fluctuations of individual species in the well-studied ungulate community of Yellowstone National Park (Yellowstone). Despite dramatic ecological changes following the 1988 wildfires and 1995 wolf re-introduction, the Yellowstone death assemblage is highly faithful to the living community in species richness and community structure. These results agree with studies of tropical death assemblages and establish the broad capability of vertebrate remains to provide high-quality ecological data from disparate ecosystems and biomes. Importantly, the Yellowstone death assemblage also correctly identifies species that changed significantly in abundance over the last 20 to ∼80 years and the directions of those shifts (including local invasions and extinctions). The relative frequency of fresh versus weathered bones for individual species is also consistent with documented trends in living population sizes. Radiocarbon dating verifies the historical source of bones from Equus caballus (horse): a functionally extinct species. Bone surveys are a broadly valuable tool for obtaining population trends and baseline shifts over decadal-to-centennial timescales

Cardiac ARIA Index: Measuring the accessibility to cardiovascular services in rural and remote Australia via applied geographic spatial technology

Clark, RA, Coffee, N, Turner, D, Eckert, K, Bamford, E, van Gaans, D, Astles, P, Milligan, M, Smail, T, Stewart, S, Coombe, D, Sutcliffe, C, Wilkinson, D, Tonkin, A. On behalf of the CARDIAC-ARIA project grou