Testing the long-term efficacy of a proactive expert system intervention to prevent alcohol use in the population

酒精筛查和短暂干预是一种重要的公共卫生方法。它从接触尽可能多的人群进行筛查开始，这通常会产生相对于干预措施的高成本。然而，绝大多数被联系的人通常被排除在以下短暂干预之外，例如人们饮酒太少或太多。没有充分挖掘潜力。例如，在低风险饮酒者中，饮酒行为的边际减少甚至维持可能会对人口水平产生重大影响。因此，通过接近人群中的所有人(而不仅仅是选定的高危人群)，ASBI对人群的影响可以显著增加，而干预的成本几乎相同。开发和测试支持人群低风险饮酒的综合预防和干预(PRINT)计划的有效性。打印将基于专家系统软件。作为对酒精使用和激励变量的评估数据的响应，软件为每个人单独生成与一般人口数据相比较的反馈。参赛者将通过普通邮件收到个性化的反馈信。PRINT的目标是(1)减少高风险饮酒者的饮酒量，(2)维持低风险饮酒者的饮酒量。一个久经考验的专家系统软件将根据一项预先研究的结果进行修改，以测试酒精使用和激励变量的措施(N=150)。因此，反馈将根据个人的特定需求进行定制，这些需求与他/她的动机状态和饮酒模式有关。PRINT的有效性将在一项随机对照试验中进行测试，该试验在登记处客户中进行为期12个月的随访，年龄在18岁到之间(N=1648)。实际影响：我们预计将提供一种基于计算机的短暂酒精干预，适用于广泛的人群，无论他们的饮酒情况和风险状况如何。这项干预可能有可能以较低的成本在人群水平上减少高危酒精使用和与酒精相关的问题。

Alcohol screening and brief Intervention is an important public health approach. It starts with contacting as many persons of a population as possible for screening, which usually produces high costs relative to the intervention. However, the vast majority of the contacted persons is typically excluded from the following brief intervention, e.g. people drinking too little or too heavily. The full potential is not exploited. E.g. among persons with low-risk alcohol use, marginal reductions or even the maintenance of the drinking behavior can produce large effects on a population level. Thus, the population impact of ASBI could be increased considerably by approaching all persons of a population (rather than a selected high-risk population only), while the costs for the intervention remain almost identical.To develop and test the efficacy of an integrative PRevention and INTervention (PRINT) program to support low-risk alcohol use in the population. PRINT will be based on expert system software. In response to assessment data on alcohol use and motivational variables, feedback in comparison to general population data is generated individually by the software for each person. Participants will receive individualized feedback letters by ordinary mail. PRINT aims to result in (1) drinking reductions among persons with at-risk alcohol use and (2) maintenance of the drinking among persons with low-risk alcohol use.A well-tried expert system software will be modified based on results from a pre-study to test measures for alcohol use and motivational variables (N = 150). As a result, feedback will be tailored to a person`s specific needs associated with his/ her motivation status and drinking pattern. The efficacy of PRINT will be tested in a randomized controlled trial with 12-month follow-up among registry office clients aged between 18 and 64 years (N = 1648).EXPECTED IMPACT: We expect to provide a computer-based brief alcohol intervention that is appropriate for a wide range of people regardless of their drinking and risk status. The intervention may have the potential to decrease at-risk alcohol use and alcohol-related problems on a population level at low costs.