Efficacy after 6 months of a virtual intervention in reducing the practice of binge drinking among young night clubbers

• Grant number: 14/18602-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: September 01, 2014
• End date: August 31, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Health Sciences - Collective Health - Public Health
• Principal Investigator: Zila van der Meer Sanchez Dutenhefner
• Grantee: Yago Carvalho Baldin
• Host Institution: Escola Paulista de Medicina (EPM). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus São Paulo. São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 11/51658-0 - Patterns of alcohol and other drugs consumption on nightclubs and bars: epidemiology, ethnography and intervention, AP.JP

Abstract

Recently digital interventions to decrease alcohol consumption and other drugs have been tested especially in Europe and USA. One of the lines that have demonstrated efficacy for young people, especially formed by university, is the "Social norms approach" which recognizes that individuals, particularly young people, tend to overestimate the drinking of their peers, and that this skewed perception leads them to drink more than they would do. The approach of social norms via internet aims to reduce these misconceptions, and thus personal consumption of alcohol, by using personalized messages about consumption. Despite the spread of Internet access in Brazil and intervention programs abroad based on the Internet, this field of study is still not widespread in our country and, in the case of randomized studies that test the effectiveness of the program among patrons of high-risk environments, this shortage is global, since almost all studies on this topic, involve students recruited from their own universities. An internet intervention that shows efficacy (significant decrease in the frequency and amount of alcohol consumed, considering episodes of binge) is the e-SBI, developed in Australia and New Zealand and which until now has only been tested in undergraduate students whose habit of drinking was harmful, established by a screening of the AUDIT of 8 points or more. Imagining that the practice of binge is high in party environments (as has been shown in international studies and that must be verified in this study) and that the target population for this intervention that aims decrease the practice of binge is in these sites, it becomes extremely interesting to spread a program that is accessed via web in sobriety (not the same day binge) and causes the subject to reflect on their pattern of alcohol consumption compared to the subjects with similar socioeconomic characteristics. Note also that web interventions reach a larger population than those which depend on the search of the subject by the health system and, furthermore, provide identification of the problem previous stages to addiction. (AU)

Scientific publications

(References retrieved automatically from Web of Science and SciELO through information on FAPESP grants and their corresponding numbers as mentioned in the publications by the authors)

YAGO C BALDIN; ADRIANA SANUDO; ZILA M SANCHEZ. Efetividade de uma intervenção digital na diminuição da prática de binge drinking entre frequentadores de baladas. Revista de Saúde Pública, v. 52, 2018-01-18. (14/18602-0, 11/51658-0)