Young men’s gambling and violence perpetration in Mwanza, Tanzania

Abstract Background The prevalence of intimate partner violence (IPV) in Tanzania is one of the highest in the sub-Saharan African region. Studies have shown that traditionally “manly” behaviours, such as risk-taking, are at the root of IPV perpetration. Only few studies investigated the co-occurrence of gambling and IPV, and none from LMICs. Methods Cross-sectional survey data of 1002 men aged 18-24 from Mwanza, Tanzania were analysed. Physical, sexual, emotional and economic IPV perpetration were measured using acts-based questions. Gambling was assessed through a question on whether the man bet or spent money on gambling or gambling machines. Consequences of gambling behaviours were assessed through four further questions. We conducted multivariate logistic regressions to control for potential confounders. Results 21% of the men in the sample confirmed they had bet or spent money on gambling in the previous 12 months; the prevalence raises to 24% for men who had been in a relationship in the previous 12 months (N = 755). Of these, 23% had ever perpetrated physical IPV, 29% sexual IPV, 56% emotional IPV and 37% economic IPV in their lifetimes. Of those who gambled, 24% had ever perpetrated physical IPV, 46% ever committed sexual IPV, 66% emotional IPV and 45% economic IPV. Gambling was statistically significantly associated sexual IPV (aOR: 2.39; 95% CI: 1.66-3.45) and emotional IPV (aOR: 1.48; 95% CI: 1.03-2.14) even after controlling for age, alcohol use, depressive symptoms and suicidal ideation. Gambling was not associated with physical and economic IPV after adjusting for those confounders. Implications The analysis shows that young men's practice of gambling is an additional risk factor for IPV perpetration that needs to be addressed. More research is needed to understand how current prevention efforts can be expanded to include problem gambling treatment to curb the incidence of IPV and give couples conflict resolutions skills for issues that might arise from gambling. Key messages • Problem gambling has so far remained vastly under-researched in violence research. • Gambling as well as drinking were associated with increased odds of physical and sexual IPV perpetration.


Background:
The prevalence of intimate partner violence (IPV) in Tanzania is one of the highest in the sub-Saharan African region. Studies have shown that traditionally ''manly'' behaviours, such as risk-taking, are at the root of IPV perpetration. Only few studies investigated the co-occurrence of gambling and IPV, and none from LMICs.

Methods:
Cross-sectional survey data of 1002 men aged 18-24 from Mwanza, Tanzania were analysed. Physical, sexual, emotional and economic IPV perpetration were measured using actsbased questions. Gambling was assessed through a question on whether the man bet or spent money on gambling or gambling machines. Consequences of gambling behaviours were assessed through four further questions. We conducted multivariate logistic regressions to control for potential confounders. Results: 21% of the men in the sample confirmed they had bet or spent money on gambling in the previous 12 months; the prevalence raises to 24% for men who had been in a relationship in the previous 12 months (N = 755). Of these, 23% had ever perpetrated physical IPV, 29% sexual IPV, 56% emotional IPV and 37% economic IPV in their lifetimes. Of those who gambled, 24% had ever perpetrated physical IPV, 46% ever committed sexual IPV, 66% emotional IPV and 45% economic IPV. Gambling was statistically significantly associated sexual IPV (aOR: 2.39; 95% CI: 1.66-3.45) and emotional IPV (aOR: 1.48; 95% CI: 1.03-2.14) even after controlling for age, alcohol use, depressive symptoms and suicidal ideation. Gambling was not associated with physical and economic IPV after adjusting for those confounders.

Implications:
The analysis shows that young men's practice of gambling is an additional risk factor for IPV perpetration that needs to be addressed. More research is needed to understand how current prevention efforts can be expanded to include problem gambling treatment to curb the incidence of IPV and give couples conflict resolutions skills for issues that might arise from gambling.

Key messages:
Problem gambling has so far remained vastly underresearched in violence research. Gambling as well as drinking were associated with increased odds of physical and sexual IPV perpetration.
1.P. Skills building seminar: Taking the elevator pitch to the next level: how to convince a policymaker in less than 2 minutes Since a number of years the European Public Health Association (EUPHA), the European Public Health Conferences and other organisations have been working hard to translate the evidence in a such a format that policymakers take notice. For example, the WHO Regional Office for Europe works on 'telling the public health narrative' and provides factsheets and infographics, in order to effectively communicate public health messages to policymakers. At the European Public Health Conference so-called pitch presentations were introduced (at Glasgow 2014), where researchers are asked to present their work in 5 minutes with maximum 5 slides (no animations), as a way to learn to present key messages from research in just a few minutes. EUPHA has organised several skills building workshops on translation of evidence in the past years, including the 2019 session 'making the elevator pitch work', then in 2020 'making the elevator pitch more effective', and last year 'making the elevator pitch perfect'. Building forward on those three successful and wellattended workshops, the current workshop will follow up on this series and dive deeper into communicating the evidence through the elevator pitch. Lessons learned at the previous elevator pitch workshops: -Have a clear ask (keep it simple).
-Appeal to the policymaker's own interests and priorities.
-Spell out how action will be beneficial for the policymaker.
-Be aware of upcoming elections.
-Built a relationship with the assistants of politicians.
-Make the comparison with the policy plan.
-Propose an action the politician should undertake.
-Identifying the relevant stakeholders and groups affected by the problem. The importance of effectively communicating the evidence to policymakers is highlighted by infodemics, e.g. called out by the WHO and UN in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic with the spreading of mis-and disinformation about the pandemic. Considering the physical distancing measures that were in place the past years, which made teleworking (working from home) more common, the workshop will also cover virtual tactics. Communicating the science in an increasingly virtual world has made it a whole different kind of sports. In this skills-building workshop, we will select a number of abstracts that have been accepted by the International Scientific Committee as posters and we will invite the presenting authors to this dare: Present your work and key messages in less than 2 minutes. In order to see whether the policymaker/politician is convinced, we are organising a small panel of policymakers and politicians and ask them to give their feedback. Are they interested? Do they remember the key message? And if all goes well, do you get an invitation to come back and present more of your work?
After the first SARS-CoV-2 infections surge in late 2019, and its spreading worldwide, COVID-19 rapidly became a pandemic by March 2020. Facing a new public health crisis, the scientific community deployed research efforts to study this new disease, generating a large amount of scientific evidence in a very fast way. This research was developed in several directions, for instance, describing how COVID-19 impacts the population's health and well-being. Specifically, the research aimed at describing and evaluating the risk factors either for being infected or evolving toward adverse outcomes, such as hospitalisation or death. Moreover, the effectiveness of implemented public health measures was assessed since countries' governments rapidly implemented them to mitigate the pandemic.Therefore, several literature reviews have been performed within the European Project 'Population Health Information Research Infrastructure (PHIRI)' to summarise and share the published COVID-19 evidence through a health information portal, where researchers and other stakeholders can exchange best practices and expertise. This workshop aims at sharing the collaborative work and experience of a large group of European researchers within the PHIRI consortium, consisting in preliminary results and lessons learnt with the scientific community. The workshop format consists of five presentations by PHIRI members, each one presenting their literature review work, followed by a discussion among the presenters and with the audience. The first workshop presentation will describe the methodological aspects of research conducted to assess the COVID-19 impact on the population's health and well-being, including research methods and statistical methods. The subject for the second talk will show a representative sample of health indicators used to evaluate the direct impact of COVID-19 in the scientific literature. The third presentation will elaborate on a short and long-term impact of COVID-19 crisis on population with frailty, multimorbidity or with different socioeconomic status; evidence derived from systematic literature reviews of population-based studies. The fourth presentation will describe the effectiveness and impact of tracking COVID-19 patients using digital contact tracing tools. The last presentation describes the methodological aspects of a systematic literature review conducted to gain an overview of the foresight studies that have been done throughout the World about COVID-19.

Key messages:
During the pandemic, a literature reviews provide an important tool to summarise the large amount of scientific evidence that was generated. This workshop aims at sharing the collaborative work and experience of a large group of European researchers participating at PHIRI, the results and lessons learned with the scientific community. COVID-19 spread worldwide after the surge of a novel coronavirus infecting humans in late 2019, rapidly becoming a pandemic in early 2020. Then, the scientific community started studying SARS-CoV-2 infection to address the uncertainties around the impact of this new disease on the population health and sustain public health measures to mitigate it. As a result, the research on COVID-19 proliferated fast, and the number of related records also multiplied in research databases. By November 2020, one year after starting the outbreak, PubMed counted more than 80 thousand records, which had already tripled by April 2022. Facing that large body of research, the PHIRI WP5 team deployed a literature review to identify research methods and the research paths from the generation and collection of data used to assess the COVID-19 impact on the population's health and wellbeing. Consequently, this work aims to describe the evidence gathered according to the location where the research was conducted, its design and statistical methods used to analyse the COVID-19 impact. Therefore, the sample of COVID-19related records indexed in the PubMed database until November 2020, which concomitantly matched the ''data'' search term, was considered. As a large sample was retrieved (19837 records), automated text analysis and text mining methods were considered to summarise the information. Then, titles and abstracts were screened for inclusion, and more than half of the initial sample was excluded. The main reasons to exclude were not using original data, not being related to the assessment of the impact of COVID-19 on the population's health or well-being, or not having complete information on the title and abstract. This work is intended to highlight gaps in the evidence on the COVID-19 impact on the population's health and well-being, leading to further research that could enhance the countries' preparedness for future pandemics.