Social-emotional competence and bullying/cyberbullying prevention increasingly are being prioriti... more Social-emotional competence and bullying/cyberbullying prevention increasingly are being prioritized by schools, so development of novel, low-cost and high-yield programs addressing these topics is important. Further, rigorous assessment of interventions prior to widespread dissemination is crucial. This study assessed the effectiveness and implementation fidelity of the ACT Out! Social Issue Theater program, a one-hour psychodramatic intervention by professional actors; it also measured students' receptiveness to the intervention. This study was a two-arm cluster randomized control trial with 1:1 allocation that randomized either to the ACT Out! intervention or control (treatment as usual) at the classroom level (n = 76 classrooms in 12 schools across five counties in Indiana, comprised of n = 1,571 students at pretest in 4th, 7th, and 10th grades). The primary outcomes were self-reported social-emotional competence, bullying perpetration, and bullying victimization, and the se...
Supplemental material, Supplemental_-_Classroom_Counts for Developing and Validating a Novel Anon... more Supplemental material, Supplemental_-_Classroom_Counts for Developing and Validating a Novel Anonymous Method for Matching Longitudinal School-Based Data by Jon Agley, David Tidd, Mikyoung Jun, Lori Eldridge, Yunyu Xiao, Steve Sussman, Wasantha Jayawardene, Daniel Agley, Ruth Gassman and Stephanie L. Dickinson in Educational and Psychological Measurement
Background Students in the United States spend a meaningful portion of their developmental lives ... more Background Students in the United States spend a meaningful portion of their developmental lives in school. In recent years, researchers and educators have begun to focus explicitly on social and emotional learning (SEL) in the school setting. Initial evidence from meta-analyses suggests that curricula designed to promote SEL likely produce benefits in terms of social-emotional competence (SEC) and numerous related behavioral and affective outcomes. At the same time, there are often barriers to implementing such curricula as intended, and some researchers have questioned the strength of the evaluation data from SEL programs. As part of the effort to improve programming in SEL, this paper describes the protocol for a cluster randomized trial of the ACT OUT! Social Issue Theater program, a brief psychodramatic intervention to build SEC and reduce bullying behavior in students. Objective The objective of this trial is to examine if a short dose of interactive psychodrama can affect SEC...
Background Schools increasingly prioritize social-emotional competence and bullying and cyberbull... more Background Schools increasingly prioritize social-emotional competence and bullying and cyberbullying prevention, so the development of novel, low-cost, and high-yield programs addressing these topics is important. Further, rigorous assessment of interventions prior to widespread dissemination is crucial. Objective This study assesses the effectiveness and implementation fidelity of the ACT Out! Social Issue Theater program, a 1-hour psychodramatic intervention by professional actors; it also measures students’ receptiveness to the intervention. Methods This study is a 2-arm cluster randomized control trial with 1:1 allocation that randomized either to the ACT Out! intervention or control (treatment as usual) at the classroom level (n=76 classrooms in 12 schools across 5 counties in Indiana, comprised of 1571 students at pretest in fourth, seventh, and tenth grades). The primary outcomes were self-reported social-emotional competence, bullying perpetration, and bullying victimizatio...
Prospective longitudinal data collection is an important way for researchers and evaluators to as... more Prospective longitudinal data collection is an important way for researchers and evaluators to assess change. In school-based settings, for low-risk and/or likely-beneficial interventions or surveys, data quality and ethical standards are both arguably stronger when using a waiver of parental consent—but doing so often requires the use of anonymous data collection methods. The standard solution to this problem has been the use of a self-generated identification code. However, such codes often incorporate personalized elements (e.g., birth month, middle initial) that, even when meeting the technical standard for anonymity, may raise concerns among both youth participants and their parents, potentially altering willingness to participate, response quality, or generating outrage. There may be value, therefore, in developing a self-generated identification code and matching approach that not only is technically anonymous but also appears anonymous to a research-naive individual. This ar...
Background: Pharmacies have much to contribute to the health of people who inject drugs (PWID) an... more Background: Pharmacies have much to contribute to the health of people who inject drugs (PWID) and to community efforts in HIV and hepatitis C (HCV) prevention through syringe access. However, little is known about what predicts pharmacy syringe sales without a prescription.
Background: While naloxone, the overdose reversal medication, has been available for decades, fac... more Background: While naloxone, the overdose reversal medication, has been available for decades, factors associated with its availability through pharmacies remain unclear. Studies suggest that policy and pharmacist beliefs may impact availability. Indiana passed a standing order law for naloxone in 2015 to increase access to naloxone.
Screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment (SBIRT) is a promising public health app... more Screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment (SBIRT) is a promising public health approach for problematic substance use. A core component of SBIRT is the use of formal screening tools to categorize a patient's likely level of risk in order to provide an appropriately-matched service. Training in formal screening is included in many SBIRT training programs, but infrequently is emphasized. To assess pre-training levels of SBIRT-related clinical behaviors, including screening, this study examined a secondary dataset collected from internal medicine residents and graduate nurse practitioner students. Learners (n = 117) completed 13 self-report items assessing use of SBIRT-related behaviors. Researchers used exploratory factor analysis to identify underlying concepts in the questionnaire, then used mixed ANOVA to compare mean frequency of utilization of each factor (asking, screening, and intervening) by academic program. Learners reported asking about substance use freq...
American journal of medical quality : the official journal of the American College of Medical Quality, 2018
Previous studies have identified drug and alcohol use as risk factors for readmission using claim... more Previous studies have identified drug and alcohol use as risk factors for readmission using claims data, but not by using substance use screening scores. This preliminary study tested the hypothesis that prevalence of 30-day readmission would be higher among patients screening positive on the 10-item Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT-10) or the 10-item Drug Abuse Screening Test (DAST-10) tools at intake than among the general patient population. Social workers screened 4708 adult inpatients using prescreening questions followed by the AUDIT-10 and/or DAST-10. Patients with positive screens were followed for readmissions within 30 days of discharge. A positive screening score on the AUDIT-10 or DAST-10 instrument at intake was associated with higher risk of readmission to the general medicine wards within 30 days; this relationship appears complex and subject to mediation. Post hoc chart review found that the majority of readmissions among patients with positive screen...
Health Services Research and Managerial Epidemiology, 2015
Background: Screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment (SBIRT) is an efficacious pr... more Background: Screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment (SBIRT) is an efficacious prevention practice. However, little research has assessed differences in prescreening outcomes between inpatient and outpatient primary care or among different prescreening administration methods. This study tested whether administration method (self-administered vs interview) and setting (inpatient versus outpatient) predicted prescreening outcomes in a large sample of primary care patients. Then, among patients who prescreened positive, it tested whether full screening scores differed by administration method and setting. Methods: Researchers used binomial logistic regression to assess predicted prescreening outcomes and analysis of variance to assess differences in SBIRT screening scores across a total of 14 447 unique patient visits in 10 outpatient sites and 1 centrally located hospital. Results: Controlling for gender, depression, and other substance use, both medical setting and method of prescreening, predicted prescreening results. Among patients who prescreened positive for alcohol, setting also was associated with mean screening scores. However, outcomes were not uniform by substance (eg, alcohol vs other drugs). Conclusion: The results support previous studies on this topic that had utilized cross-study comparison or that were not specific to SBIRT prescreening/screening mechanisms. At the same time, nuanced findings were observed that had not previously been reported and suggest the need for further research in this area.
Screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment (SBIRT) has been shown to reduce substan... more Screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment (SBIRT) has been shown to reduce substance use and related consequences in primary care settings. Indiana University School of Medicine (IUSM) trains all primary care medical residents to implement SBIRT at an adult primary care clinic. Training methods include web-based modules, face-to-face trainings, and interactive workshops. Continuous process evaluation and training modification is important to institutional adoption of new protocols. Further, time spent in training often is related to participants' satisfaction. Following six months of SBIRT training, 26.5% of medical residents trained (N=49) indicated dissatisfaction with the length of the training. These responses highlighted the need to develop a shorter training without adversely affecting learning outcomes. We therefore streamlined the curriculum by removing extraneous demonstrative materials (i.e., videos) and carefully pruning non-essential didactic informati...
SBIRT (screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment) has been shown to reduce substan... more SBIRT (screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment) has been shown to reduce substance use and related consequences in primary care settings. Organizational SBIRT adoption and implementation requires buy-in and coordination of multiple stakeholders. This initiative sought to develop and test training and implementation resources for physicians and clinic staff at a high-volume (30,000 patients/year), community-based, ethnically-diverse adult primary care clinic, which serves as primary practice site for over 55 resident and faculty physicians. Development followed a multistage iterative process involving multiple disciplines: physicians, mental health counselors, educators and assessment experts. We chose various methods of educational dissemination: web-based training, face-to-face sessions, and interactive workshops. We implemented clinic-based patient screening, hired an onsite substance counselor for treatment referrals, printed formal screening tools and posters, r...
The co-occurrence of problematic alcohol use and depression among the primary patient population ... more The co-occurrence of problematic alcohol use and depression among the primary patient population in the United States is well-documented. However, meta analytic studies identify few instances of comorbidity research using screening instruments. Identifying the existence of such a comorbidity is important because the disorders may causally interact and prevent patient improvement. This study explored the use of standardized screening tools (AUDIT and PHQ-9) to identify and address comorbidities between problematic alcohol use and depression by examining a sample of 10,268 primary care patients at five community health centers. Each patient was prescreened for alcohol use and depression, and positive patients completed the appropriate full screening instrument(s). We used one-way ANOVA analyses and Tukey's post-hoc test to compare patients who prescreened negative for alcohol and those scoring in each of the AUDIT's four diagnostic zones in order to assess differences in the p...
To evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of transdermal alcohol content (TAC) data (i.e. index test) c... more To evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of transdermal alcohol content (TAC) data (i.e. index test) collected with wearable alcohol monitors for assessment of alcohol use or any other alcohol related outcome (e.g., excessive alcohol use) among adults 18 and older. Methods: We will systematically search MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO, and the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI, Web of Science) for TAC validation studies. The reference standards for this systematic review study are alcohol use data collected through self-reports, breathalyzers, or blood samples. If enough studies are available to conduct a meta-analysis, we will use a hierarchical regression approach to pool the results and obtain summary point estimates.
BACKGROUND School-based alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use (ATOD) surveys are a common epidemio... more BACKGROUND School-based alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use (ATOD) surveys are a common epidemiological means of understanding youth risk behaviors. They can be used to monitor national trends and provide data, in aggregate, to schools, communities, and states for the purposes of funding allocation, prevention programming, and other supportive infrastructure. However, such surveys are targeted by criticism, and even legal action, with surprising regularity. The ubiquity of social media has added the risk of potential ‘online firestorms’ – or digital outrage events – to the hazards to be considered when administering such a survey. To date, little research has investigated the influence of online firestorms on public health survey administration, and no research has analyzed the content of such an occurrence. Analyzing this content will facilitate insights as to how practitioners can minimize the risk of generating outrage when conducting public health surveys. OBJECTIVE This study ...
In the United States, approximately 30% of adults drink at risky levels or meet the criteria for ... more In the United States, approximately 30% of adults drink at risky levels or meet the criteria for harmful or dependent alcohol use. Screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment (SBIRT) in primary care settings is indicated. This study assessed whether knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs about SBIRT, evaluated after a three-part, mixed-methods training, predicted whether 21 family nurse practitioner (FNP) students screened for alcohol use during clinical patient encounters. After training, students completed a survey and documented implementation of SBIRT during their clinical practice-specific management courses. FNP students who reported higher levels of perceived competence in their posttraining surveys were more likely to screen for alcohol in the clinical setting. Screening for alcohol misuse and identifying patients engaged in hazardous drinking meet important nurse practitioner competencies. Further research is needed to explore training programs that specifically emp...
Screening and brief intervention (SBI) for alcohol is an evidence-based prevention practice desig... more Screening and brief intervention (SBI) for alcohol is an evidence-based prevention practice designed to reduce frequency and severity of alcohol misuse. Many studies have validated the effectiveness of SBI for reducing levels of alcohol misuse, especially in primary medical care. Additional research continues to be conducted in terms of the effectiveness of including referral to treatment (SBIRT) and addressing illicit drug use and prescription drug abuse. Importantly, cross-comparison among SBIRT programs is difficult because evaluative processes vary widely between programs, which themselves often are substantively different. In this brief report, we utilized cross-comparison techniques to elucidate similarities and differences among SBIRT fidelity tools and proficiency checklists. In early 2014, researchers completed a systematic review of SBIRT fidelity tools and proficiency checklists published or made available from 2004 through April 2014; in total, eleven instruments were lo...
The article is based on the supposition that personal experiences with alcohol influence how mast... more The article is based on the supposition that personal experiences with alcohol influence how master's of social work (MSW) students interact with problem-drinking clients and their significant others. The study compared self-report drinking practices of 413 MSW students with 552 undergraduate college students from universities in the Northeast. The variables were having five or more drinks during the past two weeks, feeling the need to cut down, having an alcohol problem, recovering, and consuming the student's last drink. The MSW students, within age and gender categories, did not drink as excessively as the undergraduate students, although a greater percentage were recovering, a finding of high relevance for the training of these students.
Social-emotional competence and bullying/cyberbullying prevention increasingly are being prioriti... more Social-emotional competence and bullying/cyberbullying prevention increasingly are being prioritized by schools, so development of novel, low-cost and high-yield programs addressing these topics is important. Further, rigorous assessment of interventions prior to widespread dissemination is crucial. This study assessed the effectiveness and implementation fidelity of the ACT Out! Social Issue Theater program, a one-hour psychodramatic intervention by professional actors; it also measured students' receptiveness to the intervention. This study was a two-arm cluster randomized control trial with 1:1 allocation that randomized either to the ACT Out! intervention or control (treatment as usual) at the classroom level (n = 76 classrooms in 12 schools across five counties in Indiana, comprised of n = 1,571 students at pretest in 4th, 7th, and 10th grades). The primary outcomes were self-reported social-emotional competence, bullying perpetration, and bullying victimization, and the se...
Supplemental material, Supplemental_-_Classroom_Counts for Developing and Validating a Novel Anon... more Supplemental material, Supplemental_-_Classroom_Counts for Developing and Validating a Novel Anonymous Method for Matching Longitudinal School-Based Data by Jon Agley, David Tidd, Mikyoung Jun, Lori Eldridge, Yunyu Xiao, Steve Sussman, Wasantha Jayawardene, Daniel Agley, Ruth Gassman and Stephanie L. Dickinson in Educational and Psychological Measurement
Background Students in the United States spend a meaningful portion of their developmental lives ... more Background Students in the United States spend a meaningful portion of their developmental lives in school. In recent years, researchers and educators have begun to focus explicitly on social and emotional learning (SEL) in the school setting. Initial evidence from meta-analyses suggests that curricula designed to promote SEL likely produce benefits in terms of social-emotional competence (SEC) and numerous related behavioral and affective outcomes. At the same time, there are often barriers to implementing such curricula as intended, and some researchers have questioned the strength of the evaluation data from SEL programs. As part of the effort to improve programming in SEL, this paper describes the protocol for a cluster randomized trial of the ACT OUT! Social Issue Theater program, a brief psychodramatic intervention to build SEC and reduce bullying behavior in students. Objective The objective of this trial is to examine if a short dose of interactive psychodrama can affect SEC...
Background Schools increasingly prioritize social-emotional competence and bullying and cyberbull... more Background Schools increasingly prioritize social-emotional competence and bullying and cyberbullying prevention, so the development of novel, low-cost, and high-yield programs addressing these topics is important. Further, rigorous assessment of interventions prior to widespread dissemination is crucial. Objective This study assesses the effectiveness and implementation fidelity of the ACT Out! Social Issue Theater program, a 1-hour psychodramatic intervention by professional actors; it also measures students’ receptiveness to the intervention. Methods This study is a 2-arm cluster randomized control trial with 1:1 allocation that randomized either to the ACT Out! intervention or control (treatment as usual) at the classroom level (n=76 classrooms in 12 schools across 5 counties in Indiana, comprised of 1571 students at pretest in fourth, seventh, and tenth grades). The primary outcomes were self-reported social-emotional competence, bullying perpetration, and bullying victimizatio...
Prospective longitudinal data collection is an important way for researchers and evaluators to as... more Prospective longitudinal data collection is an important way for researchers and evaluators to assess change. In school-based settings, for low-risk and/or likely-beneficial interventions or surveys, data quality and ethical standards are both arguably stronger when using a waiver of parental consent—but doing so often requires the use of anonymous data collection methods. The standard solution to this problem has been the use of a self-generated identification code. However, such codes often incorporate personalized elements (e.g., birth month, middle initial) that, even when meeting the technical standard for anonymity, may raise concerns among both youth participants and their parents, potentially altering willingness to participate, response quality, or generating outrage. There may be value, therefore, in developing a self-generated identification code and matching approach that not only is technically anonymous but also appears anonymous to a research-naive individual. This ar...
Background: Pharmacies have much to contribute to the health of people who inject drugs (PWID) an... more Background: Pharmacies have much to contribute to the health of people who inject drugs (PWID) and to community efforts in HIV and hepatitis C (HCV) prevention through syringe access. However, little is known about what predicts pharmacy syringe sales without a prescription.
Background: While naloxone, the overdose reversal medication, has been available for decades, fac... more Background: While naloxone, the overdose reversal medication, has been available for decades, factors associated with its availability through pharmacies remain unclear. Studies suggest that policy and pharmacist beliefs may impact availability. Indiana passed a standing order law for naloxone in 2015 to increase access to naloxone.
Screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment (SBIRT) is a promising public health app... more Screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment (SBIRT) is a promising public health approach for problematic substance use. A core component of SBIRT is the use of formal screening tools to categorize a patient's likely level of risk in order to provide an appropriately-matched service. Training in formal screening is included in many SBIRT training programs, but infrequently is emphasized. To assess pre-training levels of SBIRT-related clinical behaviors, including screening, this study examined a secondary dataset collected from internal medicine residents and graduate nurse practitioner students. Learners (n = 117) completed 13 self-report items assessing use of SBIRT-related behaviors. Researchers used exploratory factor analysis to identify underlying concepts in the questionnaire, then used mixed ANOVA to compare mean frequency of utilization of each factor (asking, screening, and intervening) by academic program. Learners reported asking about substance use freq...
American journal of medical quality : the official journal of the American College of Medical Quality, 2018
Previous studies have identified drug and alcohol use as risk factors for readmission using claim... more Previous studies have identified drug and alcohol use as risk factors for readmission using claims data, but not by using substance use screening scores. This preliminary study tested the hypothesis that prevalence of 30-day readmission would be higher among patients screening positive on the 10-item Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT-10) or the 10-item Drug Abuse Screening Test (DAST-10) tools at intake than among the general patient population. Social workers screened 4708 adult inpatients using prescreening questions followed by the AUDIT-10 and/or DAST-10. Patients with positive screens were followed for readmissions within 30 days of discharge. A positive screening score on the AUDIT-10 or DAST-10 instrument at intake was associated with higher risk of readmission to the general medicine wards within 30 days; this relationship appears complex and subject to mediation. Post hoc chart review found that the majority of readmissions among patients with positive screen...
Health Services Research and Managerial Epidemiology, 2015
Background: Screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment (SBIRT) is an efficacious pr... more Background: Screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment (SBIRT) is an efficacious prevention practice. However, little research has assessed differences in prescreening outcomes between inpatient and outpatient primary care or among different prescreening administration methods. This study tested whether administration method (self-administered vs interview) and setting (inpatient versus outpatient) predicted prescreening outcomes in a large sample of primary care patients. Then, among patients who prescreened positive, it tested whether full screening scores differed by administration method and setting. Methods: Researchers used binomial logistic regression to assess predicted prescreening outcomes and analysis of variance to assess differences in SBIRT screening scores across a total of 14 447 unique patient visits in 10 outpatient sites and 1 centrally located hospital. Results: Controlling for gender, depression, and other substance use, both medical setting and method of prescreening, predicted prescreening results. Among patients who prescreened positive for alcohol, setting also was associated with mean screening scores. However, outcomes were not uniform by substance (eg, alcohol vs other drugs). Conclusion: The results support previous studies on this topic that had utilized cross-study comparison or that were not specific to SBIRT prescreening/screening mechanisms. At the same time, nuanced findings were observed that had not previously been reported and suggest the need for further research in this area.
Screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment (SBIRT) has been shown to reduce substan... more Screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment (SBIRT) has been shown to reduce substance use and related consequences in primary care settings. Indiana University School of Medicine (IUSM) trains all primary care medical residents to implement SBIRT at an adult primary care clinic. Training methods include web-based modules, face-to-face trainings, and interactive workshops. Continuous process evaluation and training modification is important to institutional adoption of new protocols. Further, time spent in training often is related to participants' satisfaction. Following six months of SBIRT training, 26.5% of medical residents trained (N=49) indicated dissatisfaction with the length of the training. These responses highlighted the need to develop a shorter training without adversely affecting learning outcomes. We therefore streamlined the curriculum by removing extraneous demonstrative materials (i.e., videos) and carefully pruning non-essential didactic informati...
SBIRT (screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment) has been shown to reduce substan... more SBIRT (screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment) has been shown to reduce substance use and related consequences in primary care settings. Organizational SBIRT adoption and implementation requires buy-in and coordination of multiple stakeholders. This initiative sought to develop and test training and implementation resources for physicians and clinic staff at a high-volume (30,000 patients/year), community-based, ethnically-diverse adult primary care clinic, which serves as primary practice site for over 55 resident and faculty physicians. Development followed a multistage iterative process involving multiple disciplines: physicians, mental health counselors, educators and assessment experts. We chose various methods of educational dissemination: web-based training, face-to-face sessions, and interactive workshops. We implemented clinic-based patient screening, hired an onsite substance counselor for treatment referrals, printed formal screening tools and posters, r...
The co-occurrence of problematic alcohol use and depression among the primary patient population ... more The co-occurrence of problematic alcohol use and depression among the primary patient population in the United States is well-documented. However, meta analytic studies identify few instances of comorbidity research using screening instruments. Identifying the existence of such a comorbidity is important because the disorders may causally interact and prevent patient improvement. This study explored the use of standardized screening tools (AUDIT and PHQ-9) to identify and address comorbidities between problematic alcohol use and depression by examining a sample of 10,268 primary care patients at five community health centers. Each patient was prescreened for alcohol use and depression, and positive patients completed the appropriate full screening instrument(s). We used one-way ANOVA analyses and Tukey's post-hoc test to compare patients who prescreened negative for alcohol and those scoring in each of the AUDIT's four diagnostic zones in order to assess differences in the p...
To evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of transdermal alcohol content (TAC) data (i.e. index test) c... more To evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of transdermal alcohol content (TAC) data (i.e. index test) collected with wearable alcohol monitors for assessment of alcohol use or any other alcohol related outcome (e.g., excessive alcohol use) among adults 18 and older. Methods: We will systematically search MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO, and the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI, Web of Science) for TAC validation studies. The reference standards for this systematic review study are alcohol use data collected through self-reports, breathalyzers, or blood samples. If enough studies are available to conduct a meta-analysis, we will use a hierarchical regression approach to pool the results and obtain summary point estimates.
BACKGROUND School-based alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use (ATOD) surveys are a common epidemio... more BACKGROUND School-based alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use (ATOD) surveys are a common epidemiological means of understanding youth risk behaviors. They can be used to monitor national trends and provide data, in aggregate, to schools, communities, and states for the purposes of funding allocation, prevention programming, and other supportive infrastructure. However, such surveys are targeted by criticism, and even legal action, with surprising regularity. The ubiquity of social media has added the risk of potential ‘online firestorms’ – or digital outrage events – to the hazards to be considered when administering such a survey. To date, little research has investigated the influence of online firestorms on public health survey administration, and no research has analyzed the content of such an occurrence. Analyzing this content will facilitate insights as to how practitioners can minimize the risk of generating outrage when conducting public health surveys. OBJECTIVE This study ...
In the United States, approximately 30% of adults drink at risky levels or meet the criteria for ... more In the United States, approximately 30% of adults drink at risky levels or meet the criteria for harmful or dependent alcohol use. Screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment (SBIRT) in primary care settings is indicated. This study assessed whether knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs about SBIRT, evaluated after a three-part, mixed-methods training, predicted whether 21 family nurse practitioner (FNP) students screened for alcohol use during clinical patient encounters. After training, students completed a survey and documented implementation of SBIRT during their clinical practice-specific management courses. FNP students who reported higher levels of perceived competence in their posttraining surveys were more likely to screen for alcohol in the clinical setting. Screening for alcohol misuse and identifying patients engaged in hazardous drinking meet important nurse practitioner competencies. Further research is needed to explore training programs that specifically emp...
Screening and brief intervention (SBI) for alcohol is an evidence-based prevention practice desig... more Screening and brief intervention (SBI) for alcohol is an evidence-based prevention practice designed to reduce frequency and severity of alcohol misuse. Many studies have validated the effectiveness of SBI for reducing levels of alcohol misuse, especially in primary medical care. Additional research continues to be conducted in terms of the effectiveness of including referral to treatment (SBIRT) and addressing illicit drug use and prescription drug abuse. Importantly, cross-comparison among SBIRT programs is difficult because evaluative processes vary widely between programs, which themselves often are substantively different. In this brief report, we utilized cross-comparison techniques to elucidate similarities and differences among SBIRT fidelity tools and proficiency checklists. In early 2014, researchers completed a systematic review of SBIRT fidelity tools and proficiency checklists published or made available from 2004 through April 2014; in total, eleven instruments were lo...
The article is based on the supposition that personal experiences with alcohol influence how mast... more The article is based on the supposition that personal experiences with alcohol influence how master's of social work (MSW) students interact with problem-drinking clients and their significant others. The study compared self-report drinking practices of 413 MSW students with 552 undergraduate college students from universities in the Northeast. The variables were having five or more drinks during the past two weeks, feeling the need to cut down, having an alcohol problem, recovering, and consuming the student's last drink. The MSW students, within age and gender categories, did not drink as excessively as the undergraduate students, although a greater percentage were recovering, a finding of high relevance for the training of these students.
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Papers by Ruth Gassman