University of Helsinki
The Gambling Network has the pleasure to host the guest lecture of Dr Angela Rintoul and Prof Charles Livingstone on gambling regulation and harm prevention. Based at the University of Monash, Australia, they are currently on a research visit to Europe funded by the Churchill Fellowship in order to investigate international lessons for gambling reform and regulation.
Time: 27 March 2019, 14.00-16.00
Place: Soc & Kom building, 2nd floor, room 210 (Address: Yrjö-Koskisen katu 3)
Self-regulation of gambling and harmful EGM practices: Place based study provides global lessons for gambling regulation
Angela Rintoul
Findings from a place-based study in two sites (suburban Melbourne Australia) will be presented. The study employed multiple methods including analysis of administrative data, venue observations, focus groups with local residents and interviews with people who gamble, family members and professionals. Venues, particularly in Site 1, promoted themselves as ‘family friendly’, offering incentives to attract people with children. Social stress (e.g. poverty, commute-time) is an emerging factor that may explain some of the differences in the use of EGMs between sites. Venues demonstrated failures in their responsibilities to adhere to operator codes of conduct, instead encouraging extended use of machines. This study has implications for many jurisdictions on the effectiveness of industry self-regulation via codes of conduct, and the limitations of ‘responsible gambling’.
Adapting public health lessons to gambling harm prevention
Charles Livingstone
Gambling harm prevention has been hampered by a poor evidence base, dominance of ‘responsible gambling’ and ‘problem gambler’ paradigms, and apparent inability to adapt from other areas of public health success. Experts in public health interventions, (tobacco control, alcohol policy, blood borne viruses and obesity/physical activity), informed by a review of gambling harm prevention interventions, assessed areas within their fields where important lessons could be adapted. Multiple recommendations were developed. These focus on development of a systematic, iterative approach to gambling harm prevention and minimisation, avoiding the orthodoxy of ‘responsible gambling’, and broadening the evidence base for gambling harm prevention.
Dr Angela Rintoul
Angela Rintoul is a Research Fellow at the Australian Gambling Research Centre at the Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS) and an Adjunct Research Fellow at the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Monash University. Angela was recently awarded a Churchill Fellowship to investigate international lessons for gambling reform and regulation.
Prof Charles Livingstone
Dr Charles Livingstone is an Associate Professor in the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University, Australia. He is head of the Gambling and Social Determinants unit within SPHPM. He has research degrees in economics and social theory. His current principal research interest is critical gambling studies, including in particular gambling policy reform and the politics, regulation and social impacts of electronic gambling machine (EGM) gambling.
The Gambling Network (Finnish: Peliverkko) is a network of various Finnish stakeholders in the field of gambling, including researchers, practitioners, policy makers, monopoly representatives, civil society actors, as well as people interested in research on gambling. It is organised jointly by the University of Helsinki Centre for Research on Addiction, Control, and Governance CEACG and the National Institute for Health and Welfare. The network usually convenes four times a year. For further information; contact: michael.egerer@helsinki.fi or jani.selin@thl.fi