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Agnès CAILLE, Bruno GIRAUDEAU (SPHERE) et Laurent BILLOT (The George Institute for Global Health, Newtown, AUS) are organising an Inserm workshop on cluster randomised trials.

The theoretical phase will take place on 21-23 June 2023 in Bordeaux with many international experts.

Practical workshops are proposed in October 2023 in Tours.

The 2020-2022 thesis prize «Daniel Schwartz», founder of the French Society of Biometrics, French component of the International Biometric Society (IBS), was awarded to two spherian doctoral students: Arthur CHATTON and Marion KERIOUI

They were invited to present their research at the Journée Jeunes Chercheur.e.s of the Société Française de Biométrie, held in Rennes on 19 January 2023.

Congratulations to both of you!

The Digital Public Health Graduate Program is proposing the PhD training "Design, Analysis and Reporting of Cluster Randomised Trials" (CLUSTER) with professors Laurent Billot and Bruno Giraudeau (Université de Tours).

Aims. To estimate whether the use of wagering inducements has a significant impact on the gambling behaviors of online gamblers and describe this temporal relation under naturalistic conditions. Design. This longitudinal observational study is part of the second stage of the Screening for Excessive Gambling Behaviors on the Internet (EDEIN) research program. Setting. Gambling tracking data from the French national online gambling authority (poker, horse race betting and sports betting) and from the French national lottery operator (lotteries and scratch games). Participants. A total of 9306 gamblers who played poker, horse race or sports betting and 5682 gamblers who played lotteries and scratch games completed an online survey. The gender ratio was largely male (around 90% for poker, horse race betting and sports betting and 65% for lotteries). Median age ranged from 35 (sports betting) to 53 (horse race betting and lotteries). Measurements. The survey used the Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI) to determine the status of the gamblers (at-risk or not). Gambling tracking data included weekly gambling intensity (wagers, deposits), gambling frequency (number of gambling days), proxies of at-risk gambling behaviors (chasing and breadth of involvement), and use of wagering inducements. Findings Use of wagering inducements was associated with an increase of gambling intensity (β between -0.06 [-0.08;-0.05] and 0.57 [0.54;0.60]), gambling frequency (β between 0.12 [0.10;0.18] and 0.29 [0.28;0.31]), and at-risk gambling behaviors (odds ratio between 1.32 [1.16;1.50] and 4.82 [4.61;5.05]) at the same week of their use. This effect was stronger for at-risk gambling behaviors and at-risk gamblers. Conclusions. Wagering inducements may represent a risk factor for developing or exacerbating gambling problems.

Both in France and Sweden, global changes in online gambling activities due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and their potential for gambling problems, are a source of concerns for public health authorities. The CONGA project aims to measuring the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the online gambling activity, both in France and Sweden. The use of gambling tracking data, widely acclaimed in recent years in research on online gambling given its ecological nature, could allow observing longitudinally changes in online gambling activities due to the pandemic. Moreover, the combination of French and Swedish data will allow comparing two countries with very distinct politics regarding the pandemics, i.e. a lockdown in France compared to no lockdown in Sweden. The CONGA study will provide a better understanding of the impact of restriction measures in the context of the health crisis on online gambling activities. Moreover, the identification of sub-populations particularly at risk of increasing their gambling activity in response to the health crisis will have both clinical and epidemiological perspectives, even beyond the current period of crisis.

Principal investigator: Gaëlle Challet-Bouju