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Dr Amber Copeland from the Sheffield Addictions Research Group (SARG) has been awarded a prestigious Wellcome Trust fellowship worth £591,755 over five years. The funding will support a new project to develop a cutting-edge computational model that explores how a person's environment influences their attempts to cut down on alcohol.

The project, entitled 'A Novel Interdisciplinary Approach to Understanding How Contextual Factors Influence Alcohol Consumption', will integrate two computational modelling techniques never before combined in public health research: a 'drift-diffusion model' to understand the processes that underlie immediate, moment-to-moment decisions people make, and an 'agent-based model' to simulate how these individual decisions lead to population-level trends over time.

The new model is designed to inform public health policy, particularly important at a time of record-high alcohol-related harm in England. It will draw upon extensive real-world data to simulate how hypothetical policies aimed at reducing alcohol consumption influence decision-making when people are faced with immediate opportunities to drink in different contexts – such as their location or who they are with – and how these individual choices affect long-term population-level trends.

The policies to be tested could include increasing access to alcohol-free alternatives – that is, any rewarding activities or interests that might reduce a person's alcohol consumption such as employment, hobbies or sports – or reducing exposure to alcohol advertising. The exact policies will be determined in collaboration with key stakeholders including policymakers, clinicians and people with lived experience of addiction.

This model will be a unique and powerful addition to SARG's existing modelling capabilities. It will sit alongside the group's established modelling platforms, such as the influential Sheffield Tobacco and Alcohol Policy Modelling Platform (STAPM), which has been instrumental in evaluating the health and economic impacts of tobacco and alcohol policies. Dr Copeland's model will offer a new dimension by providing a deeper understanding of the cognitive processes that drive drinking decisions, thereby helping to bridge the gap between individual behaviour and population-wide trends.

The methodological tools developed during the project, while initially focused on alcohol, will be adaptable to other public health challenges such as diet, vaping and gambling.

Dr Copeland has previously used computational models of value-based decision-making (VBDM) to investigate the mechanisms that underlie behaviour change and recovery from addiction, finding evidence that decision-making processes are sensitive to different contexts. You can also read about her research into value-based decision-making in daily tobacco smokers on the SARG Blog.

The Wellcome Trust funds research to improve life, health and wellbeing through new knowledge and understanding. Their funding supports early-career, mid-career and established researchers across a broad scope of research, including physical and social sciences, clinical research and humanities.