Coordinated strategies that address alcohol availability, alcohol policy enforcement and drinking norms can help colleges and their communities protect students from the harms of high-risk drinking, according to a new study supported by the National Institutes of Health.
In the Study to Prevent Alcohol Related Consequences (SPARC), researchers found that a comprehensive environmental intervention implemented by campus-community coalitions reduced students’ scores on an index of severe consequences of college drinking. The index included items such as car accidents, DUIs/DWIs, the need for medical treatment as a result of drinking, physical fights and sexual assaults.
Benefits of the intervention extended campus-wide, affecting not only the drinkers themselves but also those around them. Alcohol-related injuries caused by students decreased by 50 percent on participating campuses.
A report of the study is online in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.
Read more via NIH News Release – National Institutes of Health (NIH).
