CARES: A Mobile Health Program for Alcohol Risk Reduction

Not Applicable

Completed

Interventions: Behavioral: CARES mobile smart phone app
Behavioral: Check Your Drinking

Brief Summary: In this fast-track STTR, Phase 1 will develop and test a mobile phone app among 40 adult community college students. The app is designed to reduce risky drinking behaviors and improve user safety. In Phase 2 the app ("CARES") will be tested with 200 adult community college students who drink alcohol. Participants will be randomly assigned to the "CARES" app or an alcohol education control condition and will use the app for 12 weeks. Six month outcomes will assess changes in drinking related behaviors.

Detailed Description: This STTR builds on our successful pilot that developed a text message-delivered alcohol intervention for, and in collaboration with CCS. Phase I will develop and test a smart phone application (the "Cares" app) incorporating the text message program with additional features and functionality requested by students in the pilot trial (Aim 1.1). After obtaining user feedback (Aim 1.2) programming will be completed in both iOS and Android languages. To ensure that the College Alcohol Risk Education System (CARES) is well positioned to get into the community college marketplace, it is critical to demonstrate efficacy. Phase 2 will conduct an efficacy trial of CARES compared to a competing alcohol education program that would be feasible for most community colleges to adopt, thus providing a real-world comparison with data suitable to support future efforts toward commercialization. This study will also identify the types of individuals for whom CARES is more/less effective and identify how it might be improved.

Recruitment & Eligibility

Inclusion Criteria

Exclusion Criteria

Arm && Interventions

Group	Intervention	Description
CARES mobile app	CARES mobile smart phone app	Participants in this arm will receive 12 weeks of text messages and use of the smart phone mobile app that provides support for alcohol risk reduction.
Alcohol Education	Check Your Drinking	Those randomized to the control arm will be given access to an online alcohol education intervention; Check Your Drinking (CYD: www.CheckYourDrinking.net). CYD provides normative feedback on the user's drinking habits relative to his/her peers.

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Drinks Per Week	30 days	Average drinks based on 30 day timeline follow back of all alcohol consumption
Alcohol Related Consequences	30 days	Negative life events related to drinking assessed by the Brief Young Adult Alcohol Consequences Questionnaire. Calculates a total score from 0-48, with higher numbers indicating worse outcomes.

Secondary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Situational Confidence	12 weeks	Confidence in drinking resistance assessed by the Brief Situational Confidence Questionnaire. Scores 8 items from 0% to 100% confidence with higher scores indicating better confidence.
Protective Strategies	12 weeks	Skills in using alcohol-protective behaviors measured by the Protective Behavioral Strategies Survey. A 15-item survey, each item is scored from 0 to 6 to indicate use of behavioral strategies and the total score is a sum of all items. Higher scores indicate more (better) use of protective strategies.