The social work profession has recently developed a commitment to preparing specialist workers in the area of alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use. In addition, non-specialist social work professionals often serve as the earliest contact points for individuals with or at risk of alcohol use disorders (e.g., in child welfare, criminal justice, education, employment, family service, domestic violence, mental health, economic self-sufficiency, and health care systems). However, as a rule, non-specialists are poorly prepared to assume effective roles in alcohol prevention, screening, assessment, diagnosis, treatment, service coordination, and treatment motivation, and the number of social workers with specialty training is too small to meet the public need. The long-term objective of the Social Work Educator's Curriculum Training Project is to enhance the ability of MSW-level social workers to effectively address their clients' alcohol-related problems. This objective will be achieved through improving the capacity of the nation's social work educators to train their specialist and non-specialist students for practice with clients who have alcohol-related problems. The NIAAA and a team of social work consultants have recently completed development of a social work curriculum on alcohol use disorders which will be the foundation for (1) training a cadre of social work educators in use of the new curricular materials, (2) studying the effect of training on the educators' comfort, attitudes, and teaching practices related to alcohol education, and (3) studying the impact oh MSW students of training the educators on the new curriculum. The curriculum training mechanisms include (1) structured face-to-face training sessions in regions with a """"""""critical mass"""""""" of interested social work educators, (2) web-based training (via Desire-To-Leam/D2L(r)) to individuals and small groups of educators, and (3) interactive televised distance education sessions. Post-training support and consultation will be provided via professional meetings and web-based resources. Pre-training, post- training, and follow up data will be collected using a stratified randomized design for immediate versus delayed training conditions, measuring comfort level, attitude, and teaching practice dimensions. Study instruments and procedures are tied to curriculum objectives. The analysis design involves both quantitative and qualitative approaches, with implications for other disciplines developing similar curricula. ? ?
