Research Update

Alcohol Use and Pregnancy: An Important Canadian Public Health and Social Issue

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6.6 Recommendations and Implications

Priorities for research, programming and policy arising from this review of the evidence in support of universal prevention measures are:

Evaluation Research

• Conduct Canadian research on the effectiveness of:
  • municipal alcohol policies on preventing alcohol use during pregnancy
  • public awareness measures such as media campaigns, mandated warning signs, and if implemented, warning labels
  • school-based FASD curricula
  • multi-component community FASD prevention strategies
• Clarify definitions for low, moderate, occasional and frequent drinking in the context of pregnancy.

Policy and Program Implications

• Give attention to social policy that reduces inequity among low-income pregnant and parenting women.
• Improve the design of public awareness programs to allow rigorous evaluation.
• Evaluate the potential for promoting health as well as harm in public awareness messages presenting an abstinence-only message.
• Build public awareness initiatives into comprehensive prevention strategies.
• Give increased attention to the issue of problematic alcohol use by adolescent and young adult women.

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