Nurse-Delivered Screening and Brief Intervention Among College Students with Hazardous Alcohol Use: A Double-Blind Randomized Clinical Trial from India

Abstract

To determine the effectiveness of individual-based, nurse-delivered, on-campus screening and brief intervention (SBI) for hazardous alcohol use among college students. It was a parallel-design, double-blind, randomized controlled trial. Out of 793 students screened, 130 met the selection criteria of hazardous alcohol use, defined by alcohol use disorder identification test (AUDIT) score 8-19. Participants were randomly allocated to either SBI or general advice group. Both interventions were delivered by one specially trained nurse. Outcome was assessed after 3months. Primary outcome was the change in the mean AUDIT score and the secondary outcome was difference in the proportion of students transited from the high- to low-risk category of AUDIT. General linear model with repeated measures and logistic regression were used to determine the primary and secondary outcome, respectively. Majority (80.7%) of the participants were men. Among all the baseline demography and clinical characteristics, only family history of alcohol use was significantly different in the groups. Intention to treat analysis showed a significant but small effect (0.16) of SBI on the mean AUDIT score. Gender did not moderate the effect. SBI was also observed to have a significant effect (adjusted odds ratio 3.7 95% CI 1.529-8.850) on shifting the students from high- to low-risk AUDIT zone. SBI among college students is acceptable and has a small but significant effect on alcohol use. In countries like India, where despite the increasing magnitude of hazardous drinking in students no formal system exists to deal with the problem, SBI might be useful.