Injury is the fourth leading cause of death in the United States, and specifically in Rhode Island as well. Motor vehicle crashes rank first as a cause of injury mortality among Rhode Islanders. Together with homicide, they took the lives of 18.4 per 100,000 Rhode Islanders. In 1986, more than 50% of injury deaths involved the use of alcohol. The Rhode Island Community Alcohol Abuse/Injury Prevention Project began in October, 1984, under a Cooperative Agreement among the Centers for Disease Control, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, and the R.I. Department of Health, to address these public health problems. Funding for the CAAIPP baseline data collection, intervention program, implementation, and a preliminary evaluation will terminate on Sept. 27, 1989. The project goal has been to develop a mechanism for surveillance, identification, and prevention of alcohol-related injuries at the community level, particularly those due to motor vehicle crashes and assaults, through the: (1) measurement of alcohol-related injuries; (2) mobilization of an intervention community; (3) prevention of alcohol-related injuries; and (4) preliminary evaluation of the results by comparison of annualized rates measuring outcome changes across time and communities and assessment of changes in knowledge, attitude, and behavior of the change agents -- servers of alcoholic beverages and police officers. A more complete and informative assessment of the program's impact is proposed in this project. Evaluation data to be collected consist of emergency room and police records, Vital Statistics, Medical Examiner's reports, hospital discharge data, and pre- and post-intervention surveys (of servers, police, high school students, and the community-at-large). Data will be analyzed, through the proposed project, to assess the effect that these interventions have had on the knowledge, attitudes, and behavior of servers and police officers, the incidence of alcohol-related motor vehicle crashes, injury/death rates, and DWI and other alcohol-related arrest rates.
| Buka, S L; Birdthistle, I J (1999) Long-term effects of a community-wide alcohol server training intervention. J Stud Alcohol 60:27-36 |
| Goldstein, R B; Buka, S L (1997) Perceived effectiveness of community-based measures against alcohol misuse among ""problem"" and ""nonproblem"" drinkers. Subst Use Misuse 32:507-54 |
| Laforge, R G; Mignon, S I (1993) Alcohol use and alcohol problems among the elderly. R I Med 76:21-6 |
