(A) Meeting of the Steering Committee on the Global Information System on Alcohol and Health (GISAH) and (B) Informal technical meeting on alcohol production and distribution data

For many years the World Health Organization (WHO) has collaborated with international experts and collaborating centres on collecting and making available data on alcohol consumption, health consequences and policy. Alcohol per capita consumption is one of the key indicators of alcohol exposure in populations and is used for estimating the disease burden attributable to alcohol worldwide. In recent years the public health importance of data on alcohol consumption has increased significantly in view of the Global Monitoring Framework for Noncommunicable Diseases (NCDs) that includes indicators on the harmful use of alcohol as one of the four key risk factors for NCDs, as well as in view of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Thirteenth General Programme of Work which include harmful use of alcohol as an indicator. The specific objectives of these meetings (A and B) are to discuss the: (1) Fast track Global Survey on SDG 3.5 indicators 2019 (A); (2) Update of data on recorded, unrecorded and total alcohol per capita consumption, as well as abstainer, heavy episodic drinkers, mortality and morbidity, and policy response data (A); (3) Reporting to SDGs, World Health Statistics (WHS), NCD Global Monitoring Framework and World Health Assembly (A); (4) Alcohol indicators relevant for publications related to NCDs, SDGs and WHS (A); (5) Maintenance and update of the GISAH web platform (A); (6) Existing data sources on alcohol production and trade as well as data gaps (B); (7) Recorded and unrecorded alcohol per capita consumption data (B); and the (8) Future monitoring and strengthening of data on alcohol production and distribution (B).