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There is a lack of evidence for effective school-based prevention programmes to reduce alcohol misuse in adolescents. The purpose of this paper is to explore teacher’s views about alcohol education in secondary schools in order to inform the subsequent development of new educational and intervention measures.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine female teachers from a range of schools who had responsibility for designing and delivering personal social, health, and economic education (PSHE).

Three main themes were identified in a thematic analysis of the interview transcripts. The themes demonstrated the importance of PSHE to these teachers, who faced challenges in delivering a comprehensive enough curriculum. Alcohol unit knowledge and responsible drinking were priorities for the teachers. However, given the many pressures faced by young people, alcohol could be viewed as just one challenge amongst many.

Interventions may be seen as too compartmentalised by teachers if they fail to address the wider concerns of adolescents. Intervention developers should consider gaining input from teachers on the content of their programmes prior to running a trial to enhance feasibility and acceptability.

There are few studies that have explored what teachers think about alcohol education in general or about the content of specific interventions prior to their implementation. This study adds their voice to the literature and highlights the importance of considering the views and first hand experiences when developing new alcohol interventions aimed at adolescents.

The International Prize for Modern Nutrition has been awarded to Dr. Louise Davies, Head of the Geriatric Nutrition Unit, Queen Elizabeth College, London University. The prize of 15,000 Sfr was given by the Central Union of Swiss Milk Producers, Berne. Scientists from the twenty nine countries who are members of the International Dairy Federation were invited to take part. The subject for the competition was The importance and value of milk and milk products in the nutrition of the elderly. Applicants were invited to submit two or three papers on the subject of the competition published during the last five years, other relevent publications and accounts of their own work in relation to the set subject.

Well known for her work for geriatrics has behind her a career which has ranged from Food and Nutrition in the 1940's to Shopping List in the 1950/60's. With such a talent for communication—what next?

A conference on catering for the elderly is being planned by the Geriatric Nutrition Unit of Queen Elizabeth College, London University. It will be a one day conference on Friday, 13th September, 1974, and will deal with problems which arise in catering in small residential homes, luncheon clubs, meals on wheels and geriatric wards in hospitals and nursing homes. There will be speakers on nutrition, menu planning, recipe making, equipment, costing, advantageous buying and also on what old people like to eat.

The ‘Towards a Healthier Britain’ Conference was arranged by Van den Berghs & Jurgens Ltd. in association with Nutrition and Food Science and held in London last April. The conference was attended by more than 500 people, including doctors, nutritionists, health visitors, other social service personnel and students. Here is an edited version of the papers presented at the Conference.

The term ‘elderly’ is often used to refer to men and women of pensionable age. But this group of people represents a cross section of the population, varying greatly in age, health, living situations, marital status, education and dietary habits. The size of the pensionable population — women aged over 60 and men over 65 — in the United Kingdon has grown rapidly in recent years. In 1901 there were 2½ million pensioners (6% of the population). By 1981, this had increased to almost 10 million (18% of the population). The greatest increase has been in the number of individuals over 80 years of age — from 218,000 to 1½ million in the same 80 year period. The over‐eighties now represent 15% of the pensionable population. More women than men are reaching very old age. The ratio of men to women is 2:1 at age 80 and nearly 3:1 at age 85.

Early health education messages made the assumption that most recommendations made on healthy eating were irrelevant to the majority of elderly people. Discusses a new report by the UK Government which has challenged this idea and now suggests that the older generation should also reduce fat, sugar and alcohol intake and increase exercise to fall in line with the population in general. This approach creates difficulties because: the elderly are so diverse as a group; those in care have a range of very practical barriers to healthy eating; and staff of care homes have to balance nutritional requirements with the resident′s need for enjoyment. Despite the apparent problems healthy eating does have a role to play. Elderly people suffer from many degenerative disorders which respond to healthy eating in the form of nutritional therapy. This approach has numerous health benefits, not least because it may reduce the number of drugs a resident requires.

MEN AND WOMEN about to retire are not always fortunate in having lectures on retirement available in their locality as, for example, Londoners have in the twelve‐week courses at Morley College (61 Westminster Bridge Road, SE1), where the Greater London Council, the Inner London Education Authority, Shell, and other big employers allow their staff afternoons off to hear specialists speak on pension problems, taxation, health, part‐time work, psychological and other problems of retirement.

With changes in the curriculum, science breakthroughs, consumer demands and the Government’s recent Green Paper on Our Healthier Nation, the British Nutrition Foundation’s National Nutrition Education Conference entitled “Emerging issues for the next millennium” informed delegates about emerging issues in nutrition and education.

“Groupware,” “groupwork,” “workgroup computing,” “computer‐supported cooperative work,” and “distributed processing” are buzzwords that refer to a new way in which personal computers are being used in offices. Personal computers hooked together into local area networks (LANs) represent the latest stage in the evolution of automated technology. Of the eleven million personal computers in business, over 950,000 are arranged in some sort of LAN set‐up. The future for this configuration of computers and workstations will grow enormously in the next few years. By 1991, a conservative estimate of 6.7 million computers will be linked together in LANs in the workplace.