Evaluating Telehealth Delivery of Brief Alcohol Screening and Intervention for College Students - Project Summary/Abstract The proposed research study will test the efficacy of a telehealth version of the Brief Alcohol Screening and Intervention for College Students (BASICS), which is the gold standard prevention and intervention approach to target heavy alcohol use on college campuses across the United States. BASICS in an NIAAA Tier 1 intervention which involves assessment of drinking behavior followed by a single in-person session in which personalized feedback is presented by a trained facilitator in a motivational interviewing (MI) style utilizing harm reduction principles to reduce risks and alcohol-related consequences. Alternative strategies requiring less time, effort, and resources, with no face-to-face interaction with a facilitator (e.g., web-based personalized feedback), have proven less effective. The in-person delivery format of BASICS has presented barriers to wider implementation due to the time, effort, and costs of traveling to and from sessions, the need for private meeting space, and the firmly fixed scheduling of intervention sessions. In the proposed study, we will evaluate the efficacy of a tele-BASICS approach utilizing the ZOOM application compared to in-person BASICS and a lower threshold treatment as usual intervention. Three hundred mandated and 300 volunteer students who report hazardous drinking will be recruited from two large universities and randomly assigned to a condition (in- person BASICS, Tele-BASICS, or treatment as usual). Follow-up assessments will occur 1-, 3-, 6-, and 12- months post-baseline. The significance of this research lies in the potential to maximize access to the highest standard of care by establishing support for easier access without sacrificing any central features of the traditional BASICS intervention. In addition, many universities pragmatically adapted existing in-person interventions to remote-telehealth approaches in response to the COVID pandemic but now have no scientific basis for determining whether transitioning back to in-person approaches would be beneficial. In addition to demonstrating non-inferiority to traditional BASICS, we expect Tele-BASICS to significantly outperform treatment as usual. Attention and working therapeutic alliance are expected to mediate intervention efficacy. We expect Tele-BASICS to have stronger effects than in-person BASICS among women, heavier drinkers, students without co-occurring substance use, and those with greater motivation. We expect higher Tele- BASICS participants recruitment and completion rates and lower costs relative to in-person BASICS. This research brings together a team of experienced investigators with a collaborative history and supports NIAAA's strategic plan to improve strategies to prevent and reduce harmful alcohol consumption in a high-risk population. The establishment of Tele-BASICS as an efficacious alternative to in-person BASICS would allow more schools to adopt BASICS as their standard of care – and potentially engage more students in empirically- supported treatment by decreasing barriers to care.
