Bridging Disciplinary Boundaries (January 11 - 14, 2007)

Purpose: The consumption of alcohol is a significant problem among undergraduate college students. Young adults, in comparison to any other age group, have the highest prevalence of high-risk drinking (5+ drinks in a row within the last two weeks), and college students engage more often in high-risk drinking than their non-college peers. Young adults are faced with daily decisions about the role that substance use will play in their lives, and college life poses potential risk for the onset of substance related harm

Setting: The problem of alcohol and drug abuse is of particular concern at the University of Tennessee. The campus, located in Knoxville Tennessee, home to 19,000 undergraduate students, and 5,000 graduate students was awarded the dubious distinction of the nation's top “party campus”.

Method/Results: This harm reduction-based prevention/early intervention initiative was aimed at undergraduate students. During the first year, the program utilized the university computer network to provide substance use information, feedback on individual drug patterns, two levels of treatment intervention and referrals to university and community treatment agencies. A computer-based screening and intervention program based on the BASICS (Brief Alcohol Screening and Intervention for College Students) intervention developed by Dimeff, Baer, Kivlahan, & Marlatt (1999) is provided to all students (n= approximately 24,000). The adaptation of the program provides a computer-based screening and brief intervention, reinforced with peer outreach workers providing services in high-risk situations, i.e. residence halls, Spring Break venues, basketball and football games, Greek events, and so forth. A subset of students, those who completed brief interventions (n=1,238), were transitioned to a computer-based self-assessment (n=504). Based on the results of the self-assessment (an AUDIT score of greater than 8), more formal in-person services were offered to those students who screened positive (n=229), and accepted by nearly half (46.7%, n=107), including a subset of individuals with extremely high AUDIT scores (n=33). by university and community service providers.

Implications: The project serves an example of the use of harm reduction-based interventions in a venue where substance use is tolerated and normalized, and may provide implications for other similar arenas. Similarly the use of computer-based interventions to both access large numbers of individuals and to collect data is also instructive.