In the first five months since the creation of the Learning Collaborative on High-Risk Drinking an initiative launched in May 2011 as part of the National College Health Improvement Project Dartmouth has begun targeted efforts to reduce alcohol abuse on campus by promoting individual intervention and improving data collection about student drinking, Aurora Matzkin '97, who leads the College's 12-person campus improvement team in coordination with NCHIP, said in an interview with The Dartmouth.
As part of the ongoing collaborative, representatives from every participating college meet for a "face-to-face learning session" with alcohol abuse experts before spending six months trying to implement and improve policies at their college, Lisa Johnson, NCHIP managing director, said in an interview with The Dartmouth. Each session focuses on a theme, which the participating schools then use to structure their efforts, Johnson said. NCHIP's first learning session, which occurred in late June, focused on individual intervention, she said.
Following the June meetings, Dartmouth and other NCHIP schools are currently in the implementation phase, and are using the "Plan, Do, Study, Act" cycle to help develop and manage their programs, Johnson said.
Although NCHIP members are primarily addressing individual intervention in alcohol abuse, some schools are also focusing on other areas such as increasing awareness, engaging parents in conversation with students about drinking risks or increasing screening efforts to reach out to and educate high-risk students, Johnson said.
Matzkin said students should expect to be asked a lot more about their drinking habits in the upcoming months as College officials continue to assess the campus drinking culture and determine ways to combat high-risk behavior.
As a part of its regular protocol, the College now screens all students with primary care appointments at Dick's House to check for alcohol abuse problems, Matzkin said.
"This is very important work, about routine screening," Johnson said. "Of the kids that are coming through Dick's House, 90 percent of the individuals are being asked if they have had five or more mixed drinks in the last week. The brief intervention or interview is something we're doing on a much broader level."
The College now sends monthly surveys to a randomized group of students asking about their alcohol consumption habits, Matzkin said. The first survey was sent out on Oct. 7 to one-twelfth of the student body, totaling approximately 350 students, Matzkin said. The surveys will continue to be sent out to a randomized, non-repeating pool of students, Matzkin said.
The goal of these programs is to gather information about alcohol consumption on campus and to steer evidence-based intervention, Matzkin said.
"We are looking at medical encounters and law enforcement encounters," she said. "We are trying to get evidence-based methods to students in a timely manner."
In the past, students who spent the night at Dick's House were not immediately enrolled in the Brief Alcohol Screening and Intervention for College Students alcohol education program, according to Matzkin.
"It used to be that it could be months to get education to students [after an alcohol incident]," Matzkin said. "Now, if you have an incident over the weekend, you'll receive an email from us on Monday."
During the first month of implementation of the speedier process, students were brought into the screening and intervention program within two weeks of an alcohol-related incident with a "100 percent success rate," Matzkin said.
The College will also supply undergraduate advisors with iPod touches to be used by their residents to take quick online surveys about their alcohol consumption, Matzkin said.
"Collecting this sort of evidence is really difficult," she said.
The survey will be "completely anonymous" in order to be conscientious about privacy issues, Matzkin said.
Dartmouth's effort also focuses on increasing student involvement through bystander intervention, such as the use of sober monitors like Green Team and the encouraged use of the Good Samaritan policy, Matzkin said.
"One of our goals is getting students to ask for help at the right time," Matzkin said. "We'd like a higher proportion of Good Sams it's an area where students are really in control."
The Learning Collaborative is still in its initial six-month phase, but Johnson said the program's members already feel both optimistic and encouraged by the progress made. With frequent NCHIP meetings, schools in the collaborative stay actively in contact with each other, Johnson said.
"We have monthly phone calls about certain topics, and schools working in that area present what they're working on," she said. "Other schools can then ask questions about what's working and what's not. There's an online workspace as well."
Besides promoting individual intervention, NCHIP members receive education and advice on ways of measuring each other's progress.
NCHIP emphasizes the importance of "qualitative improvement" when assessing alcohol-harm reduction strategies, Johnson said.
"Now schools are educated about what kind of data to collect, and contribute data on a monthly interval," she said.
NCHIP members will begin planning for the next educational meeting in January, which will be held in Austin, Texas, according to Johnson.
"Starting in November, we will start addressing where the trouble spots are in schools' environments," she said. "We expect schools to do some upfront work, doing an assessment of their environment before they show up. We want them to come to the learning session in January with the areas outlined that are preventing them from having the environment they would want."
Colleges are already starting to outline topics for discussion in the January meeting, Johnson said.
"We will be looking at access to alcohol on campuses, reducing freshman involvement in Greek programs in their first six weeks on campus, assessing schools' medical amnesty policy and looking at ways to encourage bystander intervention," Johnson said.
Looking forward to January's session, Johnson said schools will be able to consider the broader environmental factors that affect alcohol use on campus.
"The policies that exist at your school, how they are enforced, how do things get communicated, what are the social norms, what kind of communication and messaging do you need to have in place to change those socio-cultural influences these are all very rich, context-specific issues," Johnson said.
NCHIP was founded in April 2010 by College President Jim Yong Kim with the goal of using outcome-based research to devise the best ways to address alcohol abuse prevention on college campuses.
