24-11-06. World tendencies and research results in the area of gambling addiction at the 7th Annual Conference on Gambling and Addiction, in Las Vegas, the USA
From November 11th till November 14th the Responsible Gaming Fund took part in the 7th Annual Conference on Gambling and Addiction in Las Vegas, organized by National Centre for Responsible gaming (NCRG). The theme of this Conference is "Lost in Translation? The Challenge of Turning Good Research into Best Practices”.
Within the Conference, the reports of Harvard Medical School representatives were provided. Howard D. Shaffer talked about turning research results into practices; Nolan Zane, PhD from University of California, a member of Scientific Research Centre, reported how to choose a proper treatment strategy for people of different cultures
Christine Reilly showed the results of research made by Institute for Research on Pathological Gambling and Related Disorders to review the telephone helplines for addicted gamblers and their relatives. The presentation included the following: staff qualification, service level and options provided by the helplines, the average number of calls throughout the USA, etc. She also made a focus on the methods used to arrange certain helplines, united by the universal question: “How Can Helplines be More Helpful?” (research material being the helplines arranged by Missouri Gaming Commission).
The theme of introducing and promoting policies of Dutch gambling facilities to take precautions against excessive passion for gambling was presented in Pieter Remmers` report. According to the report, the predominant recommendations are informing gamblers and their relatives about the potential problem and policy adopted by the facility; giving gamblers a chance to include their names in the blacklist; increasing age quota for visitors; ensuring staff`s awareness in gambling facilities. Richard LaBrie (Harvard Medical School) and Wolfgang Schwens (Bwin.com) presented reports on “Responsible Gaming in Cyberspace” setting examples of policies and procedures used by companies designing and owning Internet casinos and other kinds of online gambling.
The official website of the conference: www.ncrg.org
