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.
