Free Alcohol Screening, Intervention Resources Abound

According to NIH statistics, 30 percent of U.S. adults have increased risks for physical, mental health and social problems because of their excessive alcohol consumption. Of that 30 percent, one in four currently has an alcohol abuse or dependency problem.

Men who consume five or more alcoholic beverages in a day and women who consume four or more drinks per day are considered to be at-risk drinkers.

A visit to the family physician's office may be the first opportunity patients have to address health problems associated with drinking and to learn about steps to control alcohol use. FPs encountering these patients may find several recently developed resources helpful.

Boston Medical Center has launched "Helping Patients with Alcohol Problems," an online curriculum that uses a patient-centered, evidenced-based approach emphasizing cross-cultural knowledge and skills to screen patients for unhealthy alcohol use and to stage brief interventions.

The curriculum can be taught by physician educators in 45-minute sessions and includes a PowerPoint presentation with trainer notes and three case-based videos demonstrating skills for dealing with patients' alcohol problems in primary care settings. The slides and videos may be downloaded from the Web at no cost. In addition, faculty members who developed the curriculum are available by appointment for live question-and-answer sessions.

Boston Medical Center also has created Alcohol and Health: Current Evidence. This online newsletter is produced six times a year and summarizes the latest clinical research on alcohol and health. It also provides free CME opportunities. Topics in the latest issue include the effects of binge drinking on myocardial infarction, costs and benefits of screening with carbohydrate-deficient transferrin in primary care, and alcohol use among low-income, pregnant Latinas.

Both the curriculum and newsletter are products of the Alcohol Clinical Training Project. They are supported by a grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and are produced in cooperation with Boston University's schools of medicine and public health.

Another resource developed by the NIAAA, Helping Patients Who Drink Too Much: A Clinician's Guide: 2005 Edition, is available for free online and in hard copy to help FPs and other primary care and mental health professionals identify and care for patients with drinking problems. This edition simplifies the alcohol screening process to a single prescreening query -- "Do you sometimes drink alcoholic beverages?" -- which helps identify patients who would benefit from screening.

Easy-to-follow flowcharts walk physicians through the screening process so they can assess a patient's level of consumption, determine alcohol's impact on a patient's life and decide whether (and how) to advise a patient to complete an alcohol treatment program.

Other features in the 2005 guide include

Finally, an AAFP toolkit, "Brief Alcohol Screening and Intervention in Family Medicine," was developed using materials adapted from the NIAAA. The toolkit is designed to give family physicians a way to routinely screen patients for alcohol abuse in much the same way they might screen for hypertension.

Print copies of the NIAAA guide may be ordered online or by calling (301) 443-3860. The AAFP toolkit may be ordered by calling (800) 944-0000 and requesting item No. 1921.