Safer Campuses and Communities
The Safer California Universities Project Summary
Background
Each year, 1,700 college students die and more than 1.4 million are injured in alcohol-related incidents. Additionally, about 25% of students reporting negative academic consequences due to alcohol. Despite the enormous public health burden of college-age alcohol misuse, there have been few rigorous evaluations of environmental strategies to address alcohol misuse in college settings; environmental strategies typically involve implementing and enforcing policies that change the environments that influence alcohol-related behavior and subsequent harm. Further, studies show that the typical lag time between identifying an effective interventions and obtaining widespread adoption can stretch to well over a decade. There is an urgent need to develop more efficient and timely strategies for moving effective science to widespread practice. This project will address this exact issue by systematically developing a marketing strategy for a comprehensive, community-based environmental prevention program with proven efficacy in reducing intoxication and alcohol-impaired driving among college students.
Background
Each year, 1,700 college students die and more than 1.4 million are injured in alcohol-related incidents. Additionally, about 25% of students reporting negative academic consequences due to alcohol. Despite the enormous public health burden of college-age alcohol misuse, there have been few rigorous evaluations of environmental strategies to address alcohol misuse in college settings; environmental strategies typically involve implementing and enforcing policies that change the environments that influence alcohol-related behavior and subsequent harm. Further, studies show that the typical lag time between identifying an effective interventions and obtaining widespread adoption can stretch to well over a decade. There is an urgent need to develop more efficient and timely strategies for moving effective science to widespread practice. This project will address this exact issue by systematically developing a marketing strategy for a comprehensive, community-based environmental prevention program with proven efficacy in reducing intoxication and alcohol-impaired driving among college students.
The Safer California Universities Project was designed, implemented, and evaluated by the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation (PIRE) with funding from the National Institute for Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). This comprehensive community-based program focuses on the first weeks of the academic year and comprises several alcohol control measures (enforcement of underage sales laws; roadside DUI operations; social host party patrols with local ordinances) along with a multi-faceted media advocacy campaign via channels unique to college student audiences. The program was implemented among campuses in the two California public university systems (UC and CSU) and proved efficacious in reducing intoxication and alcohol-impaired driving among college students.