Community Trials Intervention to Reduce High-Risk Drinking (RHRD) is a multicomponent, community-based program developed to alter alcohol-use patterns of people of all ages. It addresses underage drinking, acute (binge) drinking, and drinking and driving. The program uses a set of environmental interventions including community awareness, responsible beverage service (RBS), preventing underage alcohol access, enforcement, and community mobilization. Its aim is to help communities reduce various types of alcohol-related accidents, violence, and resulting injuries.
For the RHRD program to succeed, the implementing organization must first determine which program components will best produce the desired results for its community. RHRD uses five prevention components:
Understanding the community’s alcohol environment (norms, attitudes, usage locations, cultural and socioeconomic dynamics) and alcohol distribution systems (alcohol sales licensing, alcohol outlet zoning, and alcohol use restrictions) is key to RHRD startup. This requires gathering the data needed to determine which interventions to use and adapting them to the individual community. Project staff are essential to this information gathering and for working with a wide array of community components, including local community organizations, key opinion leaders, police, zoning and planning commissions, policymakers, and the general public. Though dependent on local conditions, staff generally include the following:
Staff can be employees of the lead agency endeavoring to implement the program or may be hired and separate from existing entities.
The evaluation used a longitudinal, multiple-time series design across three intervention communities. The matched comparison communities served as no-treatment controls. Within this design, the effects of project interventions can be determined by comparing outcomes with those from the matched comparison communities.
Data collected as a part of the evaluation consisted of traffic crash records; emergency room surveys; local news coverage of alcohol-related topics; intoxicated patron and underage decoy surveys; roadside surveys conducted on weekend evenings; and a community telephone survey (including self-reported measures of drinking and of drinking and driving).
The evaluation data shows decreases in substance use and behaviors related to risk factors. Specific findings include
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Andrew J. Treno, Ph.D.
Prevention Resource Center
1995 University Avenue, Suite 450
Berkeley, CA 94704
Phone: (510) 486-1111
Fax: (510) 644-0594
E-mail: andrew@prev.org
Web site: http://www.prev.org
Andrew J. Treno, Ph.D.
Prevention Resource Center
1995 University Avenue, Suite 450
Berkeley, CA 94704
Phone: (510) 486-1111
Fax: (510) 644-0594
E-mail: andrew@prev.org
Web site: http://www.prev.org