Authors: Paul P Glasziou, Heather Buchan , Chris Del Mar, Jenny Doust, Mark Harris, Rosemary Knight, Anthony Scott, Ian A Scott, Alexis Stockwell

Financial incentives can sometimes improve the quality of clinical practice, but they may also be an expensive distraction. This BMJ article presents a checklist, based on a review of the positive and negative effects of financial incentives, to aid those making the difficult and costly decision of whether and how to use a financial incentive and to help prevent their premature or inappropriate implementation.

Author: The Lancet

The Global Burden of Disease Study 2010 (GBD 2010) is the largest ever systematic effort to describe the global distribution and causes of a wide array of major diseases, injuries, and health risk factors. It consists of seven articles, each containing a wealth of data on different aspects of the study.

According to this study, in 2010, alcohol was the world’s third most important risk factor for disability adjusted life years (a composite measure of years lived with disability and years of life lost due to premature death), after high blood pressure and tobacco smoking, and up from 6th place in 1990.

Check here the complete list of articles of GBD 2010.

Authors: Ari Rosmarin and Niamh Eastwood (Release)

'A Quiet Revolution: Drug Decriminalisation Policies in Practice Across the Globe' is the first report to support Release's campaign 'Drugs - It’s Time for Better Laws'. This report looks at over 20 countries that have adopted some form of decriminalisation of drug possession, including some States that have only decriminalised cannabis possession. The main aim of the report was to look at the existing research to establish whether the adoption of a decriminalised policy led to significant increases in drug use - the simple answer is that it did not.

More information about the campaign can be accessed at:
www.release.org.uk/decriminalisation

Authors: Sunita Bava, Joanna Jacobus, Rachel E. Thayer and Susan F. Tapert

The influence of repeated substance use during adolescent neurodevelopment remains unclear as there have been few prospective investigations. The aims of this study were to identify longitudinal changes in fiber tract integrity associated with alcohol- and marijuana-use severity over the course of 1.5 years.

Author: WHO Regional Office for Europe
The action plan was endorsed by 53 European Member States at the Regional Committee for Europe in September 2011 in Baku, Azerbaijan. It includes a wide range of policies and programmes that are relatively easy and cheap to implement, can reduce the harmful use of alcohol, promote health and well-being, improve productivity, and enhance human, health and social capital across the life course from birth to old age. This action plan proposes a range of options for the 10 action areas of the global strategy to reduce the harmful use of alcohol that all European Member States can engage in.