Correction appended
Representatives from 32 colleges and universities are looking forward the second meeting of the Learning Collaborative on High-Risk Drinking, an initiative spearheaded by the College and first introduced in May, according to William Schpero '10 GR '12, strategic advisor and director of public affairs for the National College Health Improvement Project.
The next conference, scheduled for Jan. 9-11 and being held in Austin, Texas, will focus on ways to combat high-risk drinking through "environmental intervention," Michael Fleming, who is heading the initiative's efforts at Northwestern University, said in an interview with The Dartmouth.
Environmental influences can include organizing college programming, attempting to change the social norms of drinking on campus and trying to alter the institutional consequences for alcohol-related incidents, Fleming said.
The third meeting, set to take place July 9-11, 2012, will address "systemized support" and "policy level decisions" that universities can implement to help students avoid high-risk drinking, Fleming said.
Representatives, including those from the four other Ivy League schools Brown University, Cornell University, Princeton University and Yale University have begun to prepare for the upcoming meetings, according to Traci Toomey, a University of Minnesota School of Public Health professor who will speak at the January meeting.
In preparation for the January meeting, Fleming said he plans to invite 15 national experts on high-risk drinking to Northwestern at the end of October to discuss various kinds of high-risk drinking intervention.
Dartmouth has been reevaluating and modifying its own goals in combating alcohol abuse on campus since the Collaborative's first meeting this summer, according to Aurora Matzkin '97, who is leading Dartmouth's campus improvement team.
In Dartmouth's first cycle of change, the College screened all students who scheduled primary care appointments at Dick's House on one day for behaviors related to high-risk drinking, according to Matzkin. The College expanded the study and now screens students every day through an evidence-based method if there is concern regarding a student's drinking behavior, she said.
Before arriving on campus, members of the Class of 2015 completed an online alcohol education program, Matzkin said. In previous years, all students used the Alcohol.edu program, but some randomly selected members of the incoming class completed the survey "My Student Body" this year. The Dartmouth team will compare outcomes for the two programs to determine how to best educate incoming students about the consequences of high-risk drinking, according to Matzkin.
Dartmouth officials plan to further develop environmental and systems-based approaches in the coming months but have so far focused on an individual-focused approach to alcohol harm reduction, Matzkin said.
Although Dartmouth received approval from the Institution Review Board in August to collect data from students, various partner institutions in the Collaborative, including Northwestern, are still awaiting approval. Fleming said he believes it is "only a matter of time" until such approval is granted.
"Some schools are more geared up for the research than others," Fleming said.
Once institutions receive IRB approval, they must decide which surveys to distribute, what policy changes to implement and what kind of data to collect, Fleming said.
"There are many alternatives that research has shown are worth pursuing, but there are a limited amount we can explore at once, and hopefully sharing information between colleges will give us a lot of contextual data," he said.
Despite enthusiasm among many members of initiative, some experts interviewed by The Dartmouth questioned whether the Collaborative will be effective.
Research based on over 300 colleges nationwide showed that there are many colleges that lack screening programs to identify students at risk for alcohol-related problems as well as empirically-supported intervention programs, according to Toben Nelson, a professor from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, who attended the initiative's initial meeting.
"My research colleagues at the University of Minnesota and I think the critical and missing link is having systems that effectively complement each other," Nelson said in an email to The Dartmouth. "My concern with the NCHIP approach so far is that there has not been much focus on creating systems to effectively deliver brief interventions."
Nelson also predicted that the second phase of the program which will focus on the environmental factors that influence drinking will be insufficient.
"I think the organizers have underestimated the magnitude of the program and the resources it will take to actually implement effective interventions," Nelson said. "Six months out of an 18 month collaborative is simply not enough time."
The Collaborative is not currently accepting additional member institutions, according to Schpero.
"The more schools we include, the harder it gets to collaborate, but we are keeping the options open in the future," he said.
Schpero is a former member of The Dartmouth Senior Staff.
