Underage drinking negatively impacts public health in communities, causing traffic accidents, risky sexual behaviors and alcohol disorders. Researchers have shown that there are several policy-based strategies that can be used to restrict minors'access to alcohol as a way to prevent underage drinking. However, communities face difficulty in achieving outcomes demonstrated by the researchers of these strategies. This """"""""gap"""""""" is because resources are limited, these strategies are complex, and communities often lack the capacity to translate """"""""off the shelf"""""""" strategies into practice. Common translation efforts, such as information dissemination, fail to change practice or outcomes at the local level in part because they do not sufficiently build capacity or use communty input. This project will assess a model-Getting To Outcomes (GTO)- designed to help communities successfully translate evidence-based strategies into practice by building their prevention capacity. Studies of coalitions who used GTO with individually focused, education-based substance abuse prevention programs have shown it can help communities improve their capacity to implement evidence based strategies and get health outcomes. This proposal is an evaluation of a new intervention based on the GTO model-Getting To Outcomes for Underage Drinking (GTO-UD). Composed of a written step by step guide, face-to-face training, and onsite technical assistance, GTO-UD has been specifically tailored to help translate the evidence-based underage drinking strategies aimed at the public policy level. The project will be a randomized controlled efficacy trial with elements of an effectiveness study (i.e., implementation in community- based setting), comparing 3 underage drinking prevention coalitions using GTO-UD with 3 similar coalitions who are not. Such blended designs that emphasize generalizability and external validity are now recommended for community-based research. The project will, in Aim 1) deliver the GTO-UD intervention and evaluate its implementation (standardized surveys and focus groups of coalition members);
in Aim 2) assess how much GTO-UD improved the translation of the environmental strategies (focus groups, fidelity checklists, implementation ratings);
Aim 3) assess how much GTO-UD improved prevention capacity and performance (standardized surveys and interviews of coalition members);in and in Aim 4) assess whether using GTO-UD to aid research translation reduces underage drinking and alcohol-related crashes and fatalities (12th grade school survey, archival crash data). Coalition representatives will be actively involved in all phases of the research. Results will have implications for how communities can implement policy-oriented underage drinking prevention strategies to reduce deaths due to alcohol-related crashes and other negative health outcomes, a key priority for the CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.
| Chinman, Matthew; Ebener, Patricia; Burkhart, Q et al. (2014) Evaluating the impact of getting to outcomes-underage drinking on prevention capacity and alcohol merchant attitudes and selling behaviors. Prev Sci 15:485-96 |
| Ebener, Patricia; Malone, Patrick; Imm, Pamela et al. (2013) The Carrot and the Stick: A Cross-Sectional Study of the Influences on Responsible Merchant Practices to Reduce Underage Drinking. J Community Psychol 41:463-470 |
| Chinman, Matthew; Burkhart, Q; Ebener, Patricia et al. (2011) The premises is the premise: understanding off- and on-premises alcohol sales outlets to improve environmental alcohol prevention strategies. Prev Sci 12:181-91 |
