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Employers Encouraged to Recognize Alcohol Awareness Month in April
April is National Alcohol Awareness Month, and employers around the country are encouraged to participate by educating employees about alcohol use and its related health issues.
National Alcohol Awareness Month is sponsored each year by the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence (NCADD). The goal of the campaign is to encourage all sectors of local communities, including business and industry, to focus on alcoholism and alcohol-related issues and help educate that alcoholism is a treatable disease. The NCADD Web site offers a variety of free materials, including fact sheets, a poster and referral resources for employees who may have alcohol-related problems, that employers can use to educate employees through publications or workplace displays.
Employers may also choose to recognize National Alcohol Awareness Month by encouraging employees to be screened so that they can assess their own drinking habits and determine whether they need help to change those habits. For example, employers can inform employees about the availability of the free, confidential and self-administered online screening tool alcoholscreening.org and make sure all employees have access to the Internet in a private location in case they want to use it. They may also choose to make private, confidential screening with a qualified professional available on or off-site. More information about how to offer such screening is available from Screening for Mental Health.
By conducting such activities, employers have the power to play an important role in reducing alcohol abuse and alcoholism in their communities. The vast majority of Americans work, and the vast majority of these workers are parents, making the workplace an extremely effective setting for prevention messages that have the power to spread exponentially to families, schools and communities.
More information about strategies employers can adopt to address alcohol and other drug problems—during National Alcohol Awareness Month and all year round—is available from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Working Partners for an Alcohol- and Drug-Free Workplace Web site.
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