The Healthy Nightlife Toolbox is a newly launched, web-based tool for prevention workers and other professionals across Europe to help create safer night-time environments.

While nightlife can offer many benefits such as opportunities to socialise, relax and exercise through dancing, it can also create substantial challenges to health and safety through excessive drinking, illicit drug use, risky sexual behaviour, violence and injuries. The Healthy Nightlife Toolbox (HNT) aims to help prevention workers and other professionals prevent or reduce harms in night-time environments by bringing together valuable information and resources on prevention and stimulating the exchange of prevention information between professionals. The toolbox contains:

1. A database of evaluated nightlife interventions
This provides access to information on interventions to protect health in nightlife that have been evaluated for their effectiveness. The interventions can be searched by type (e.g. education, environmental measures), the problem addressed (e.g. sexual health, alcohol, substance use) or by keywords. The database currently contains information on 27 interventions relating to substance use from ten different countries. These include education programmes, environmental measures, medical and first aid services, staff training and community interventions. The search results display the quality of the evaluation studies that have been conducted on the interventions, including whether their effect is positive (+), negative (-) or no effect/mixed results (?).

2. A database of published articles evaluating the effectiveness of nightlife interventions
This section contains the results of a systematic search of published academic literature which measures the effectiveness of interventions in nightlife settings. Working in a similar way to the intervention database, articles can be searched by the issue addressed and keywords. There are currently 31 published articles relating to substance use.

3. A handbook of good practice for prevention workers
One of the key resources in the toolbox is a handbook, which aims to guide the planning and implementation of interventions. It includes background information about nightlife, information on health and safety problems in night-time settings, advice on approaching such problems, models of good practice, an overview of the different types of interventions available, and a structured methodology for the implementation of effective interventions. The handbook has been tested and evaluated in two European countries and is available to download or browse on the website.
 
4. A ‘good-to-know’ database
This section contains extra information such as academic literature, reports and other papers on general nightlife issues which may be useful and interesting to know. As with the other databases, the Good to Know section can be searched by problem addressed and keywords. There are currently 99 papers and reports relating to substance use.

5. Contact details of experts on nightlife prevention in Europe
For those professionals wanting extra advice on implementing interventions, the toolbox contains details of experts working within nightlife that may be able to offer guidance or consultancy. Contacts can be searched by their area of expertise, country and languages spoken.

In addition to these main key areas there are also opportunities to stimulate discussion about prevention work and exchange information through a HNT forum and message board. Furthermore, the Healthy Nightlife Toolbox e-newsletter is distributed each quarter, providing details of events, new publications and news. To subscribe, visit the Healthy Nightlife Toolbox website at www.hnt-info.eu


Include your work on the website

We are really keen to hear about any interventions, research, news or events relating to health in nightlife environments. If you would like to include any of your work the HNT website please go to www.hnt-info.eu and  use the ‘contribute’ button on the home page.

For more information about the project in the UK, please contact Sara Wood at the Centre for Public Health, Liverpool John Moores University at s.k.wood@ljmu.ac.uk.