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H D Holder

Publications and source records attributed to H D Holder.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

Need for a scientific basis for alcohol-involved problem prevention including a consideration of cost and effectiveness.

This editorial calls for two priorities for alcohol and drug "abuse" prevention in the Year 2000. First, all prevention programs and policies should be required to demonstrate scientific evidence of potential effectiveness before public and private funds are committed. This evidence can be based upon controlled, fully replicated research, or early evidence, not fully replicated, or even a causal theory which is supported by basic research. Second, the cost/effectiveness of prevention programs and policies should be determined. This requires a documentation of actual costs design and implementation as well as a determination of any reduction of alcohol and drug-use(r)-associated problems resulting from purposeful prevention activity.

Alcohol Drinking↗

Alcohol use and a safe environment.

Three areas are discussed which illustrate the potential for drinking to increase the threat to personal safety, i.e. family harm and disruption, violence and crime, and traffic safety. Such threats to safety are especially important in that they extend well beyond the individual drinker into the lives of family members, friends, work colleagues, and even strangers who can become injured or killed in a drinking and driving accident. Thus, alcohol policy is a concern for all citizens whose personal safety can be at risk. From this perspective, alcohol-involved problems are public health and safety issues. Controlled evaluations of a number of strategies provide evidence of potential effectiveness to reduce problems related to safety.

Accidents↗

A community prevention trial to reduce alcohol-involved accidental injury and death: overview.

The 5-year "Preventing Alcohol Trauma: A Community Trial" project in the United States was designed to reduce alcohol-involved injuries and death in three experimental communities. The project consisted of five mutually reinforcing components: (1) Community Mobilization Component to develop community organization and support, (2) Responsible Beverage Service Component to establish standards for servers and owner/managers of on-premise alcohol outlets to reduce their risk of having intoxicated and/or underage customers in bars and restaurants, (3) Drinking and Driving Component to increase local DWI enforcement efficiency and to increase the actual and perceived risk that drinking drivers would be detected, (4) Underage Drinking Component to reduce retail availability of alcohol to minors, and (5) Alcohol Access Component to use local zoning powers and other municipal controls of outlet number and density to reduce the availability of alcohol. This paper gives an overview of the rationale and causal model, the research design and outline of each intervention component for the entire prevention trial.

Accident Prevention↗

Community mobilization: evaluation of an environmental approach to local action.

"Community mobilization" in the Community Trials Project refers to organizing community members to support and implement policies to reduce alcohol-involved trauma. This paper defines the conceptual model of mobilization used in the project. In evaluating the project, we were guided by the conceptual model and we used structured materials from interviews with local staff in all three experimental communities; we found that the overall goal of mobilization (implementation of policies) was achieved. Additional observations based on naturalistic case studies of the communities include: (1) the importance of an established research base, (2) the varying role and problematic nature of coalitions, (3) the strategic advantage of early project support among the general population, (4) the role played by key leaders in mobilization, (5) the advantages of a multi-component design, and (6) the key role played by media advocacy.

Accident Prevention↗

Media advocacy in community prevention: news as a means to advance policy change.

Media advocacy within the Community Trials Project refers to the strategic use of news media to advance a social or public policy initiative. First, this paper presents a conceptual model that guided analyses of media advocacy. Secondly, it documents increases in alcohol-related news coverage. Thirdly, it compares changes in perceived risk of arrest after drinking and driving that can be linked to increased DUI news coverage. Fourthly, it examines community awareness of enforcement efforts in terms of both media advocacy efforts and traditional public information campaigns. Results indicate that: (1) training in media advocacy can increase coverage of news events generated by local community members including volunteers, (2) increased news coverage can be generated for both electronic (television) and print media, (3) increased news coverage did focus public attention on specific issues in support of prevention components, (4) while there are differential audiences/readers for the print (newspaper) and electronic (TV) media, both audiences are affected and (5) media advocacy can be more effective than a paid public information campaign in increasing public awareness of alcohol issues.

Accident Prevention↗

The effect of drinking and driving interventions on alcohol-involved traffic crashes within a comprehensive community trial.

The Drinking and Driving Component, one of five elements of the Community Trials Project, involved the implementation of a special drink driving countermeasure in the three experimental communities, one in Northern California, one in Southern California and another in South Carolina. This intensified enforcement of driving under the influence (DUI) was designed to deter potential drinking drivers by increasing their perception of the risk of being arrested leading to a reduction in the consumption of alcohol before driving. See component detailed description in Voas (1997, this issue). The evaluation found that media advocacy training and technical assistance resulted in increased DUI news coverage and that additional police officer hours for DUI enforcement, greater use of breathalyzer equipment, increased officer training and more checkpoints produced increased DUI enforcement. The combined effects of increased DUI news coverage and DUI enforcement yielded increased public perceived risk of arrest and subsequently less drinking and driving. Overall the evaluation found that alcohol-involved traffic crashes were reduced as a result of this component in the experimental communities as contrasted with the matched comparison communities.

Accidents, Traffic↗

Community prevention and alcohol retail access.

This paper describes the design, rationale and implementation of the Alcohol Access Component within the Community Trials Project of the Prevention Research Center. The Alcohol Access Component was to reduce the concentration or density of alcohol outlets in each experimental community by a combination of local zoning and land-use planning approaches which was an effect to occur over several years. During the time of this trial, local regulations of alcohol outlets and public sites for drinking were changed in all three experimental communities. The amount of such alcohol policy change exceeded the goals for this component.

Alcohol Drinking↗

Application of local policy to prevent alcohol problems: experiences from a community trial.

Alcohol policy conventionally has been established at the national or regional, state and provincial levels. Alcohol policy at any level is not actually limited to the regulation and control of alcohol production, wholesale distribution, and retail sales. There are a number of alternatives for setting alcohol policies within a local community. Building upon existing national and state/provincial laws, policy makers at the community level can set priorities for allocating resources and enforcing laws related to drinking and driving, underage alcohol sales, alcohol serving practices of bars and restaurants and geographical density of alcohol outlets in the community. This paper concludes from the Community Trials Project that policies established at the local level can reduce alcohol problems.

Alcohol Drinking↗

Summing up: lessons from a comprehensive community prevention trial.

This paper presents the findings and lessons from a community prevention trial involving three experimental communities in the United States to reduce alcohol-involved trauma. The paper provides recommendations for other community prevention efforts. Effectiveness was demonstrated by: (a) 78 fewer alcohol-involved traffic crashes as a result of the Drinking and Driving Component alone (approximately a 10% reduction); (b) a significant reduction in underage sales of alcohol, i.e. off-premise outlets sold to minors about one-half as often as in comparison communities; (c) increased implementation of responsible beverage service policies by bars and restaurants; and (d) increased adoption of local ordinances and regulations to reduce concentrations of alcohol outlets.

Accident Prevention↗

Altering alcohol price by ethanol content: results from a Swedish tax policy in 1992.

In July 1992, the Swedish alcohol retail monopoly reset the taxes for alcohol sold in state stores according to absolute alcohol content. This provided a unique opportunity to examine the effects on alcohol sales within the three beverage classes (beer, wine and spirits) in a situation where price is purposely linked to alcohol content. The most notable effects of the taxation change were a substantial compression of the range of prices for spirits and wine and a corresponding expansion of the price spectrum for beer. Consumers appear to have responded to these tax changes by shifting away from beverage brands that became relatively more expensive. These results suggest that alcohol policy strategies to reduce total alcohol consumption should consider the entire price/quality spectrum as well as differences in absolute alcohol per volume across the three alcohol beverage types.

Alcohol Drinking↗

Measurement of alcohol-involved injury in community prevention: the search for a surrogate III.

Alcohol is involved in a substantial percentage of injuries, with estimates in the United States ranging from 3% of drownings up to 50% of fatal traffic crashes. Thus, alcohol-involved injury is a natural target for prevention efforts, particularly at the community level. Although a potentially valuable target, the measurement of alcohol-involved injuries for purposes of outcome evaluation of such prevention is problematic. The consistent measurement of alcohol in the blood of injured persons is not a regular aspect of acute medical treatment. Thus, alternatives are needed both for epidemiological, as well as prevention, research. This study will review three alternative measurements of alcohol-involved injury [i.e., (a) emergency room interviews and breath testing for blood alcohol concentration, (b) telephone surveys of self-reported injuries after drinking, and (c) injury surrogate derived archival data from hospital inpatient treatment]. After comparing the strengths and weaknesses of all three and investigating the sensitivity of the injury surrogate to detect changes in alcohol-involved injuries, this study concludes that the injury surrogate is a reliable, low-cost, and valid outcome measure for prevention evaluation.

Adolescent↗

Evaluation of media advocacy efforts within a community trial to reduce alcohol-involved injury. Preliminary newspaper results.

This article examines coverage of alcohol-related topics in local newspapers as applied to a conceptual model of media advocacy being tested in a five-component community trial to reduce alcohol-involved injuries. Based on a literature review of determinants of exposure of newspaper articles, it uses a composite measure that takes into account the likelihood that given articles will be read. This measure is evaluated in terms of the timing of media advocacy training, technical consultation, and resulting media advocacy efforts. Three hypotheses find support. First, postintervention levels of coverage across experimental communities appear generally higher than similar preintervention coverage. Second, although postintervention local and county coverage appears higher across experimental communities, no equivalent effect is present across comparison communities. Third, increases in local and county coverage in experimental communities were not matched by increases in state and national coverage in these communities.

Accident Prevention↗

Potential consequences from possible changes to Nordic retail alcohol monopolies resulting from European Union membership.

This paper projects the consequences of modifying or eliminating the current national alcohol retail monopolies in Sweden, Norway and Finland as a possible result of those countries' membership in the European Union (EU). First, the authors project absolute alcohol consumption in each country based on different possible changes in alcohol price and availability. Then they predict the future levels of alcohol-related problems likely to result from increased per capita alcohol consumption (Sweden and Norway only). All of the scenarios examined in this paper are expected to lead to increases in per capita alcohol consumption. The smallest increase in consumption would result from a partial elimination of the current monopoly and a modest reduction in alcohol prices. In that case, projected per capita consumption in Sweden for inhabitants 15 years and older would rise from 6.3 to 9.3 litres; in Norway, from 4.7 to 6.7 litres; and in Finland, from 8.4 to 11.1 litres. The greatest projected increase in consumption would result from a complete elimination of the state monopolies such that all beer, wine and spirits were sold in food shops, grocery stores and gasoline stations, along with a substantial drop in alcohol prices as a result of private competition within each country and increased cross-border alcohol purchases. That scenario would result in projected per capita consumption of 12.7 litres in Sweden, 11.1 litres in Norway and 13.7 litres in Finland. The authors project that a 1-litre increase in consumption would result in a 9.5% increase in total alcohol-related mortality in Sweden and a 9.7% increase in Norway. Further, alcohol-related assaults would increase by 9% in Sweden and 9.6% in Norway. A 5-litre increase in consumption would result in a 62% increase in alcohol-related mortality in Sweden and a 60% increase in Norway, and a 57% increase in alcohol-involved assaults in both countries.

Alcohol Drinking↗

Changes in alcohol consumption resulting from the elimination of retail wine monopolies: results from five U.S. states.

OBJECTIVE: The role of publicly owned and operated retail alcohol monopolies is currently under debate in many Western and former Eastern-bloc countries. We studied the effects of privatizing wine sales in five U.S. states. METHOD: Data on monthly sales of alcoholic beverages were collected for each of the five states, for all states bordering each of the five states and for the U.S. as a whole for the period from 1968 through 1991. Beer and spirits sales data were collected for comparison with wine sales. A quasiexperimental interrupted time-series design was used, including comparison groups consisting of border states, all other U.S. states and beer and spirits sales within the focal state. Box-Jenkins time-series statistical modeling was used to control for intra- and cross-series dependencies and to estimate the net effect of privatization on wine sales. RESULTS: After controlling for both nationwide and state-specific trends, we found significant increases in wine sales after privatization of 42% in Alabama, 150% in Idaho, 137% in Maine, 75% in Montana and 15% in New Hampshire. The increases in liters of pure ethanol per year in the form of wine were 621,000 in Alabama, 432,000 in Idaho, 364,000 in Maine, 363,000 in Montana and 171,000 in New Hampshire. CONCLUSIONS: The structure of the retail alcohol distribution system has a significant effect on alcohol sales. We recommend that the social costs associated with increased alcohol use be carefully considered before such major policy changes are contemplated.

Alcohol Drinking↗