Alcohol abuse and the range of negative consequences that accompany it are pervasive and long-standing threats to the health and well-being of U.S. college students. Increasingly, it is recognized that the adverse consequences of college student drinking are not contained within campus boundaries but affect neighboring communities as well. It has also been suggested that on-campus prevention efforts, which, to date have overwhelmingly focused on the individual drinker and not the larger environment, may be hampered by ready access to alcohol off campus and that policy and prevention efforts that focus predominantly on campus may serve to exacerbate student alcohol abuse into the community. In response to just such concerns, recently strongly expressed by a neighboring municipality, the University of Rhode Island administration seeks technical support and assistance from NIAAA and a matched research team under PAR-03-133. Specifically, we propose to demonstrate the feasibility of environmental management (EM) approaches to both universal (community) and selected (""""""""Greek"""""""") populations developed and implemented in collaboration with existing """"""""Town"""""""" and """"""""Greek"""""""" coalitions.
Major aims i nclude the application of empirically supported coalition development tasks of mobilization, structure, capacity, and planning for action (Specific Aims 1a and 2a) to set the stage for collaborative implementation of a complementary range of EM initiatives related to alcohol access, policy/law enforcement, harm reduction, and marketing/promotion (Specific Aims 1b and 2b). With technical assistance from NIAAA and a matched research team, these aims will be evaluated using an array of survey, key informant interviews, observational analyses, and archival data. We believe that our previous policy and prevention efforts and very strong institutional support, place us in an outstanding position to successfully achieve these aims, which would constitute significant advancement of preventive interventions in college populations and the PAR objective of merging science and practice. ? ?
| Wood, Mark D; Dejong, William; Fairlie, Anne M et al. (2009) Common ground: an investigation of environmental management alcohol prevention initiatives in a college community. J Stud Alcohol Drugs Suppl :96-105 |
