News & Media

Members of the Sheffield Addictions Research Group (SARG) will join researchers from across the country next week to present work on alcohol-free and low-alcohol drinks, agent-based modelling, systems mapping and food insecurity.

The UK Society for Behavioural Medicine (UKSBM) is a network of academic and clinical health researchers interested in applying knowledge, theory and evidence on health-related behaviours to improve the health and wellbeing of people in the United Kingdom and beyond.

Next week, SARG will participate in the Society's 21st Annual Scientific Meeting, which is being held in our home city of Sheffield on 28-29 April 2026. The event aims to showcase the best of the UK's research in behavioural medicine, and the theme for this year's conference is Building Health Equity Together: Perspectives, Communities and Behavioural Science.

Research presentations

Our team will be delivering several oral presentations throughout the conference, sharing findings from recent studies and detailing innovative new modelling techniques.

• Dr Merve Mollaahmetoglu: Availability and affordability of No and Low alcoholic drinks in the off-trade: comparison by area level deprivation
  Dr Mollaahmetoglu will present research into whether alcohol-free and low-alcohol drinks are equally accessible across different communities. A retail audit of Sheffield stores found that those in more deprived areas stock a smaller variety of no- and low-alcohol drinks and are less likely to display them in prominent, high-traffic locations, suggesting that physical barriers may prevent some groups from switching to lower-strength options.

• Dr Merve Mollaahmetoglu: Cue reactivity to core branded and non-core branded no and low alcoholic drink cues compared to soft drink cues among hazardous and harmful drinkers
  In a second presentation, Dr Mollaahmetoglu will discuss how risky drinkers react to marketing for alcohol-free and low-alcohol drinks. The study explored whether seeing adverts for alcohol-free versions of famous beer brands triggers cravings for the full-strength original. The research found that these cues did not significantly increase cravings compared to non-branded alternatives, and actually resulted in lower cravings than soft drink adverts.

• Prof Hazel Squires: A comprehensive and transparent process for developing an agent-based model structure for public health policy analysis which incorporates behavioural theory and social structures, using a case study of smoking cessation
  Professor Squires will outline a new, collaborative approach to creating agent-based models -simulations that look at how individuals interact within a population. A team of health economic modellers, health psychologists, and systems engineers used behavioural systems mapping to link personal attributes and social networks to smoking behaviours, providing a more robust tool for testing the impact of future government policies.

• Madeleine Henney: The building blocks of an Agent-Based Model of Food Insecurity Interventions
  Madeleine will describe the development of a model designed to simulate food insecurity interventions. Her PhD research uses agent-based modelling to understand how barriers like stigma, mental health, and opening times affect whether people can access support. This work demonstrates how digital frameworks can help us understand and address the real-world social complexities of food insecurity.

Poster presentations

In addition to these talks, SARG researchers will be presenting posters detailing ongoing work and experimental methodologies.

• Lucy Burke: Price over Proof: Developing a cross-commodity purchase task to understand the potential for substitution from alcohol to alcohol-free and low-alcohol alternatives amongst higher risk drinkers in the UK
  Lucy's poster explores whether the price of alcohol-free and low-alcohol drinks acts as a barrier for high-risk drinkers. Using a purchase task experiment with 1,500 participants, the study investigates if lowering the price of alcohol-free alternatives encourages people to substitute their usual alcoholic drinks, or if price remains secondary to other drinking motives.

• Dr Amber Copeland: Contextual Influences on Alcohol Use: A Participatory Systems Mapping Study
  Dr Copeland will showcase a systems mapping study that involves people with lived experience, healthcare workers, and policymakers. This collaborative project aims to map out the real-time factors – such as social settings and emotional states – that influence the decision to drink alcohol. The findings will provide the foundation for a new agent-based model to support context-sensitive alcohol policy.

View the full programme

Further information about the conference, including full abstracts for all presentations and posters, is available on the UKSBM Annual Scientific Meeting website.