Raising Awareness on Alcohol Dependence and its Health Impacts in Australia

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1. PROJECT TITLE: Raising Awareness among Australian People
Regarding Excessive Alcohol Dependence and its Impacts of
Health of Common People
2. PROJECT START AND END DATES: 7/1/2019 to 6/8/2019
3. PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
This project is based on raising awareness among the Australian people regarding the
excessive dependency on alcohol that is causing serious health problems of the people.
From a study, it has been found that in the last two decades, alcoholism has increased
significantly in Australia that is resulting in various health problems in the people. More
and more people are having heart attacks, strokes, cirrhosis of liver and other diseases
that arise from excessive drinking of alcohol. It has been found that in addition to the
Australian men, most of the women above the age of 40 are strongly addicted to drinking.
In addition, underage drinking has become quite prevalent in the country that is evident
from the growing number of court cases regarding the same. For this reason, a campaign
will be undertaken, urging people to understand the end effects of alcohol and to stop
drinking alcohol.
4. HEALTH ISSUE:
The main health issue under focus in this proposal includes various deadly and terminal
diseases that are caused by heavy alcohol consumption. In addition to the older people
facing significant health issues regarding heavy drinking, it has also been found that most
of the heavy drinkers are taking alcohol from a very young age and have continued to
drink until they face serious health problems (Babor, Robaina & Jernigan, 2015). Due to
the heavy alcohol abuse, drinking has almost become a culture in the country and most
of the people continue to drink thinking it as a part of their tradition. Hence, it is required
to raise awareness among the people regarding the harmful impacts of alcoholism.
The severity of the problem lies in the fact that every year, thousands of people from all
age groups (even in 12-14 year old children) are falling prey to the deadly diseases like
cirrhosis of liver due to excessive drinking of alcohol. Foundation for Alcohol Research
and Education (FARE) conducted a poll around the country regarding the people’s
thoughts on the hot topic of alcoholism in the country. From the poll, the following
statistics were gained (World Health Organization & World Health Organization.
Management of Substance Abuse Unit, 2014).
78% of the poll participants believe alcohol abuse is prevalent in Australia.
78% of the poll participants believe there are currently no suitable measures
taken by the Government to reduce the harmful effects of alcohol abuse.
73% of the poll participants believe that the problem regarding alcoholism will
continue to increase in the next 10-20 years.
60% of the poll participants stated that the alcohol sponsorship in sports events
must be banned to prevent promotion of the alcoholic products.
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29% of the poll participants stated that they have been subjected to domestic
violence by strong alcohol addicts.
This survey is merely a basic statistical analysis on the growing alcohol related problem
in the country whereas the problem is reality is much bigger than these statistics speak.
Some researchers pointed out that most of the Australians do not prefer to speak publicly
about their drinking habits and hence, the actual statistics cannot be generated. Alcohol
addiction is detected mostly when the people are admitted to the hospitals due to alcohol
related diseases like cirrhosis of liver, throat cancer and others.
From a statistics collected in 2014-15, it was found that an alarming 80.6% of Australians
over the age of 18 are alcohol drinkers. In addition, 85.6% of all the males in Australia
were drinkers whereas 75.7% of all the women in Australia were drinkers. This single
statistic contains the evidence of extreme drinking problem in the country (Kubacki et al.,
2015). Another statistics show that around 50% of all the people within the age of 12 to
18 have drank alcohol that proves that the young generation is also significantly affected
by the alcoholism issue.
5. TARGET GROUP
Since the focus of this project is raising awareness for prevention of alcoholism, there is
no specific target group for the project. Awareness campaigns will be conducted for all
age groups starting from 12. This is mainly because from the initial study, it has been
found that most of the heavy drinking adults had started consuming alcohol from a very
young age (12-14). Hence, it is important to conduct the campaign for all age groups.
While planning for the campaign, the question comes out naturally that what are the
needs of the community for which, the campaign will be undertaken. Some may argue
that why the society needs to worry about one or two people catching deadly diseases
due to excessive alcoholism. It can be said that the alcoholism has extremely negative
impact on the society. Some of these problems are listed below.
Domestic Violence – Thousands of people (especially the women) in the country are
subject to domestic violence from their heavy drinker partners who cannot control
themselves once they are completely drunk. Often, these domestic violence cases
spread out from a room to a number of different households in the same neighbourhood.
Moreover, these cases of domestic violence also have significant negative impacts on
the psychology of young children.
Promote Child Drinking – The problem with heavy drinking at home is that there are
often children in the households who watch their parents drinking alcohol. They try to
copy the same and take up drinking at a very young age. This results in easy addiction
that they are unable to overcome even when they become adults (Knai et al., 2015).
Moreover, children are more vulnerable to the after effects of drinking than the adults and
hence, most of them are diagnosed with cancer or cirrhosis at a very young age. These
problems will ultimately result in the downfall of the society at an accelerated rate.
In addition to the psychological issues caused by alcohol addiction, there are also
significant impacts on the health of the common people. There are several medical
conditions and diseases that are caused by excessive alcohol addiction that include heart
diseases, stroke, cirrhosis of liver, throat cancer and others. These are mostly terminal
illnesses and hence, there is no way out once someone catches one of these diseases.
Hence, it is important to spread awareness regarding the excessive consumption of
alcohol.
While the project is not expected to have immediate impact on the society, it is still
important to raise awareness among people regarding the harmful effects of alcohol
consumption. The main objective of the campaign is to aware the citizens of Australia
regarding the after effects that are not only affecting them but also their children and the
future generation.
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6. METHOD:
Initially, the project will only be undertaken in the city of Melbourne, Australia. For this
purpose, around 200 people will need to be recruited who will conduct the campaign
around various residential and public places of the city. For the recruitment of the
necessary number of people, an online recruitment drive will be initiated through various
popular social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Since most of the younger
generation are active in these platforms, it will not be hard to gather 200 enthusiastic
people for the purpose of the campaign. There are also places to extend the campaigns
to other major cities of the country like Canberra, Sydney, Hobart, Adelaide, Perth and
others once this campaign is successfully executed.
The campaign will be first started by rallies and distribution of leaflets that will contain
specific information regarding the harmful effects of alcohol consumption. After
sometime, video projectors will be setup in various public gathering sites and video
demonstrations will be given to the people regarding the harmful effects of alcoholism
with pictures and videos from real life case studies.
7. GOAL STATEMENT AND OBJECTIVES:
The goal of the campaign is to spread awareness among the people of Australia to avoid
and stop drinking to prevent the negative impacts on health caused by alcohol.
The objectives of the project are listed as follows.
 To aware the children and young people about harmful effects of drinking and
that they should not drink at any point of their lives
 To aware the adults regarding the harmful effects of drinking and the impact it
has on their children and families
 To aware the adults about solutions to their drinking problems so they stop
drinking
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8. PROJECT STRATEGIES
The entire project will be executed based on a certain set of strategies that will drive the
project forward towards its end goal. The main parts of the project strategy include the
following.
The project needs to be run because alcoholism is claiming lives at an accelerated pace
in the country. In addition, more and more people are constantly getting affected by
various terminal illnesses due to excessive consumption of alcohol. As a result of the
excessive alcohol drinking, the young generation of the country is also getting affected as
more and more young people are getting affected by excessive addiction of alcohol.
According to the National Health Survey of 2014-15, the following data have been
collected.
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