The event Alcohol marketing: Protecting the vulnerable was held at Friends House in London on Wednesday 16 October 2019, and featured presentations on a range of topics, including protecting youth, regulating digital alcohol marketing, challenging stereotypes, learning about the successes and failures of campaigners in other sectors of health policy, and ending with a policy workshop on regulating marketing to protect vulnerable groups to alcohol advertising.

[You can view / download slides of presentations given (asterisked) as a zip file.]

The full list of speakers (and their topics) are:
• Professor David Jernigan PhD* - Alcohol Marketing and Public Health – what do we know and what can we do?
• Dr Nathan Critchlow* - Regulating alcohol marketing in the digital 'Wild West'
• Chair: Katherine Severi

Session: Alcohol marketing, disrupting social norms
• Vivienne MacLaren* - Taking a Stand – Creating a ‘Clean’ Sport
• Dr Amanda Atkinson* - Alcohol marketing gender roles and stereotypes – Exploring the targeting and representation of women
• Michaela Jones* - Alcohol marketing as a barrier to recovery
• Chair: Dr Eric Carlin

Session: International examples of good practice – alcohol marketing regulations abroad and how marketing is dealt with for other unhealthy commodities
• Dr Sheila Gilheany* - What does Alcohol Action Ireland do?
• Professor Gerard Hastings OBE* - Lessons for alcohol from tobacco control
• Patti Rundall OBE* - Protecting the vulnerable through marketing restrictions
• Chair: Professor Sir Ian Gilmore

Session: Discussion and next steps: How can we protect the vulnerable through marketing restrictions
• Dan Parker - Living Loud
• Gemma Crompton - Alcohol Focus Scotland
• Colin Shevills - Balance North East
• Richard Piper - Alcohol Change UK
• Chair: David Jernigan

The conference was led by lectures from Professor David Jernigan PhD* (Boston University School of Public Health) who focused on the ways in which alcohol marketing affects young people across the globe, and Dr Nathan Critchlow*, who documented the increasingly pervasive influence of marketing in the digital sphere.

The conference also saw the first official presentation of findings from a brand new study led by Dr Amanda Atkinson* in which she detailed the effects of gendered alcohol marketing on women in modern societies. The event was rounded off with a panel discussing what steps alcohol control campaigners might take to protect those most vulnerable to alcohol marketing.