According to a study by the University of California, Irvine, an automated, bilingual, computerized alcohol use screening and intervention health tool is beneficial in lowering alcohol use among Latino emergency department patients in the United States.
The lead author, Dr. Federico Vaca, said that it is the first bilingual, large-scale emergency department and said,
This is the first bilingual, large-scale, emergency department-based, randomized clinical trial of its kind in the country focused on English- and Spanish-speaking Latino participants,
Our aim was to overcome well-known barriers to alcohol screening and intervention from the emergency department while addressing the high disease burden and health disparities related to alcohol use disorders in this population.
The participants in the clinical investigation were 840 self-identified Latino heavy drinkers. The results were recently published online in the journal JAMA Network Open. They revealed a marked decrease in the frequency of binge drinking episodes. This was investigated within the previous twenty-eight days among those who had utilized the AB-CASI health tool. This was in comparison to the group receiving standard care. The AB-CASI group demonstrated significant and sustained decreases in alcohol consumption at the 12-month point. Whereas both study groups had some reductions in alcohol use after the first month.
Vaca said,
This tool offers considerable promise in addressing alcohol-related health disparities and should be considered for routine emergency department screening and intervention, as we know that incremental sustained reductions in alcohol use can benefit both individual and public health
The team of researchers also included doctors and healthcare professionals from the Yale School of Medicine, the Yale School of Public Health and the University of Texas at El Paso.
