Universities Join Forces to Study High-Risk Drinking

Duke University is joining an initiative of colleges and
universities from across the country to address high-risk drinking on American campuses.
The Learning Collaborative on High-Risk Drinking will identify and implement
the most effective ways to confront this persistent problem and lessen the harm
it causes.

"Close to 40 percent of college students in the United
States engage in binge drinking, and that number has remained virtually
unchanged for decades," said Dartmouth College President Jim Yong Kim, a
leader in the effort. "By collaborating on this issue, comparing our
experiences, and learning from each other's best practices, we believe we are
much more likely to make meaningful and lasting progress than if each school
attempts to tackle this critical issue on its own."

Fourteen institutions have joined the Collaborative to date.
They are: Boston University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Duke
University, Frostburg State University, Northwestern University, Ohio
University, Princeton University, Purdue University, Sewanee: The University of
the South, Stanford University, Stony Brook University, University of Wyoming, and
Wesleyan University. The Collaborative will be accepting additional schools
through May 20.

"Binge drinking is a serious public health challenge,
leading to injury and in some cases, death, for hundreds of thousands of
college students each year," said U.S Health and Human Services Secretary
Kathleen Sebelius. "HHS agencies have tackled this issue over the years,
strengthening the evidence base and identifying interventions that work to
reduce binge drinking.  The Learning Collaborative on High-Risk Drinking
is a promising initiative that will implement evidence-based practices at
college campuses around the nation."

The Learning Collaborative methodology was developed by the
Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) in Cambridge, Mass., and is aimed at
spreading and adapting knowledge to different settings in order to address a
given problem or health concern. Using this system, participants are able to
implement changes quickly and determine which methods are most effective in
their institutions. These experiences then inform the process and progress of
the group as a whole.

A centerpiece of the methodology is its focus on
measurement. Various measures will be developed to track the progress of the
effort, in consultation with experts from across the country. Data will be
shared and compared among participant institutions with the goal of both
lowering the rate of binge drinking and reducing the incidence of the harm associated
with this behavior.

Students and administrators from each school will convene for
the first of a series of face-to-face meetings every six months beginning in June.
In between those meetings, teams will share outcomes and implementation methods
to assess which programs work, where they work, and why, focusing principally
on the evidence-based interventions developed in recent years that have been
shown to be effective. There will be three Collaborative learning sessions, in June
2011, January 2012, and July 2012, after which the group expects to publish its
findings.

Close to 2,000 college students in the United
States die each year from alcohol-related injuries, including motor vehicle accidents,
and an estimated 600,000 students are injured while under the influence, according
to research from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. In
addition, research has consistently shown that binge drinking often leads to
sexual abuse and unsafe sex as well as academic problems.