This new resource from the Centers for Disease Control in the United States describes alcohol screening and brief intervention as a “critical clinical preventive service.”
Alcohol screening and brief intervention identifies and helps patients who may be drinking too much. It involves:
- A validated set of screening questions to identify patients’ drinking patterns
- A short conversation with patients who are drinking too much, and for patients with severe risk, a referral with a wide range of other health and social problems, to specialized treatment as warranted
This guide is designed to help an individual or small planning team in a variety of primary care settings to adapt alcohol screening and brief interventions to their unique operational realities. It provides a series of steps to help plan, implement, and continually improve alcohol screening and brief interventions as a routine element of standard practice.
Discussion of alcohol use during pregnancy and FASD can be found throughout the guide.
For more on screening in primary care settings, see previous posts:
- “Women Want To Know” Campaign for Health Professionals from Australia (July 9, 2014)
- World Health Organization releases the first evidence-based global guidelines to prevent and treat substance use by pregnant women (April 18, 2014)
- Alcohol Screening, Brief Intervention and Referral: Helping Patients Reduce Alcohol-related Risks and Harms resource (December 17, 2012)
- “No Alcohol, No Risk” Film for Midwives (May 22, 2012)
- Women and alcohol resources from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) (March 29, 2012)
- SOGC releases new clinical guidelines on alcohol use and pregnancy (August 12, 2010)
Girls, Women, Alcohol, and Pregnancy 