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NIAAA Addresses College
Binge-Drinking Problem
by LaTonya Wesley, Public Policy Office
The National Institute of Alcoholism and Alcohol
Abuse (NIAAA) Subcommittee on College Drinking, established in 1998,
convened in Washington DC this September to discuss alcohol abuse as a
public health problem on college campuses across the nation. In their
final meeting of the year, a panel of college presidents, researchers,
and service-providers met to address the problem of binge-drinking in
college student populations.
Primary concerns of the college presidents
included the need for widespread education about the seriousness of the
problem, suggestions for gathering and analyzing data on binge-drinking,
and policy dilemmas regarding prevention and treatment both on- and
off-campus. Given the limited jurisdiction of even the most intensive
campus programming, college officials were particularly interested in
discussing the issue within a community context. "The overall
purpose of the subcommittee is to bring research to the table,"
said NIAAA Executive Officer Stephen Long. "Too many colleges
implement programs without a solid research base and without evaluation.
The only way that we will achieve long-term improvements is through
comprehensive science-based programs."
As the primary federal funding source for
behavioral research related to alcohol, NIAAA is the obvious home for
efforts to grow community interventions from earlier basic research.
Henry Wechsler, PhD, an NIAAA subcommittee member in the Department of
Health and Social Medicine at Harvard?s School of Public Health, first
started collecting national data on college students and drinking in the
early 1990s. Other researchers added that frequent college
binge-drinkers often overestimate the social norm for drinking on their
campuses, and that students' perceptions of whether their schools had a
drinking problem were related to their own drinking levels.
Existing research has found that unintentional
injury (including motor vehicle crashes, falls, drownings, burns, and
unintended gunshot wounds) claimed over 94,000 lives in 1998 and is the
leading cause of death for people aged 16-34. Approximately one-third of
unintentional injuries are estimated to be alcohol related.
Some college programs have attempted to
challenge existing social norms regarding drinking in an effort to
reduce excessive alcohol use. For example: the University of California
at Los Angeles mandates that all pledges of fraternities and sororities
attend annual workshops on acquaintance rape and its relation to
drinking. At Eastern Michigan University, their program called
"Checkpoint" consists of three 2-hour sessions to address the
effects of alcohol and goal setting to decrease the risk. Student
offenders must pay a $75 fee ($25 to the school and $50 for a court fee)
and are required to complete all three workshops. Florida State
University has created a Partnership for Alcohol Responsibility (PAR) on
their campus. PAR has successfully initiated a letter writing campaign
to local bars urging them to change advertising strategies that violated
the campus's alcohol policies.
The subcommittee concluded its meeting with a
list of recommended strategies that focus on advising NIAAA about
additional research initiatives, improving campus prevention and
treatment programs, and educating college presidents and researchers
with reliable information on the overall quality and effectiveness of
current initiatives. The subcommittee hopes to have its final report
completed by the end of the year and plans to submit it to the advisory
council at the February 2001 meeting.
Public Policy Office 750
First Street, NE Washington, DC 20002-4242
phone: 202-336-6062 fax: 202-336-6063 |