Testing the long-term efficacy of a proactive expert system intervention to prevent alcohol use in the population

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Sophie Baumann
• Subject Area: Public Health, Healthcare Research, Social and Occupational Medicine
• Term: from 2017 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 329378966

Alcohol screening and brief Intervention is an important public health approach. It starts with contacting as many persons of a population as possible for screening, which usually produces high costs relative to the intervention. However, the vast majority of the contacted persons is typically excluded from the following brief intervention, e.g. people drinking too little or too heavily. The full potential is not exploited. E.g. among persons with low-risk alcohol use, marginal reductions or even the maintenance of the drinking behavior can produce large effects on a population level. Thus, the population impact of ASBI could be increased considerably by approaching all persons of a population (rather than a selected high-risk population only), while the costs for the intervention remain almost identical.To develop and test the efficacy of an integrative PRevention and INTervention (PRINT) program to support low-risk alcohol use in the population. PRINT will be based on expert system software. In response to assessment data on alcohol use and motivational variables, feedback in comparison to general population data is generated individually by the software for each person. Participants will receive individualized feedback letters by ordinary mail. PRINT aims to result in (1) drinking reductions among persons with at-risk alcohol use and (2) maintenance of the drinking among persons with low-risk alcohol use.A well-tried expert system software will be modified based on results from a pre-study to test measures for alcohol use and motivational variables (N = 150). As a result, feedback will be tailored to a person`s specific needs associated with his/ her motivation status and drinking pattern. The efficacy of PRINT will be tested in a randomized controlled trial with 12-month follow-up among registry office clients aged between 18 and 64 years (N = 1648).EXPECTED IMPACT: We expect to provide a computer-based brief alcohol intervention that is appropriate for a wide range of people regardless of their drinking and risk status. The intervention may have the potential to decrease at-risk alcohol use and alcohol-related problems on a population level at low costs.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants