In June 2010, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) published the public health guidance Alcohol-use disorders preventing the development of hazardous and harmful drinking [NICE, 2010c]. This is also available as a quick reference guide [NICE, 2010d]. Both these documents, and supporting documents, can be downloaded from www.nice.org.uk, or are available as printed copies on request.

• The NICE Programme Development Group (PDG) looked at a 'broad range of evidence' and used 'inductive and deductive reasoning', in recognition of the fact that preventing alcohol overuse is a complex subject that cannot be realistically addressed using empirical data alone. However, the PDG underpinned their guidance with five large studies (two effectiveness reviews, two economic analysis reviews, and one modelling review). These are:
• Review 1 — Interventions on control of alcohol price, promotion and availability for prevention of alcohol-use disorders in adults and young people [University of Sheffield, 2010b].
• Review 2 — Screening and brief interventions for prevention and early identification of alcohol-use disorders in adults and young people [University of Sheffield, 2010a].
• Review 3 — Prevention and early identification of alcohol-use disorders in adults and young people. Macro-level interventions for alcohol-use disorders: cost-effectiveness review [University of Sheffield, 2010c].
• Review 4 — Prevention and early identification of alcohol-use disorders in adults and young people. Screening and brief interventions: Cost-effectiveness review [University of Sheffield, 2010d].
• Economic modelling report — Modelling to assess the effectiveness and cost effectiveness of public health-related strategies and interventions to reduce alcohol attributable harm in England using the Sheffield alcohol policy model version 2.0 [University of Sheffield, 2009].
• Information from these studies, together with the fieldwork Alcohol-use disorders: preventing the development of hazardous or harmful drinking [Sumnall et al, 2010], was used to formulate a number of evidence statements. In turn, these were used to develop 12 key recommendations. Of these, recommendations 9–12 are relevant to the scope of this CKS topic (recommendations 1–8 relate to younger people or population-level interventions). These are:
• Recommendation 9 — Screening adults.
• Recommendation 10 — Brief advice for adults.
• Recommendation 11 — Extended brief interventions for adults.
• Recommendation 12 — Referral.
• Each recommendation is transparently linked to the evidence statements it has been derived from. For instance, recommendation 9 (screening adults) is based on evidence statements 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, 6.4, 6.10, 7.3, e6.1, e6.2; modelling statement M6; and IDE (inference derived from the evidence).
• Further information on how NICE develop public guidance is given in the documents Methods for development of NICE public health guidance (second edition, 2009) and The NICE public health guidance development process: An overview for stakeholders including public health practitioners, policy makers and the public (second edition, 2009). Both these documents are available from www.nice.org.uk.