Underage Drinking: Building Health Care System Responses

Posted by on July 1, 2005

[posted from Community Based Participatory Research listserv]

Underage Drinking: Building Health Care System Responses

Funding Opportunity Number: RFA-AA-06-003
Due Date for Applications: Dec 19, 2005
Funding Instrument Type: Cooperative Agreement

Expected Number of Awards: 3
Estimated Total Program Funding: $2,000,000.00
Award Ceiling: $400,000.00

Link to Full Announcement
<a href="http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-AA-06-003.html">http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-AA-06-003.html</a>

This is Phase I of a two-part RFA. It solicits applications for cooperative agreements (U01s) to enable rural and small urban health care systems to become platforms for research programs on underage drinking. More specifically NIH seeks to fund such systems: (1) to assess the extent of underage drinking the areas they serve (Phase 1) and (2) develop capacity for intervening with this problem. Phase 2 will fund systems that have successfully completed Phase 1 to implement and evaluate interventions designed to address underage alcohol consumption in the areas they serve.

In their application, those responding to this RFA for Phase 1 of the program should describe their plans to accomplish the following:

1. Develop a program to evaluate their current infrastructure, the community of rural youth currently served, and appropriate interventions to address the underage drinking problem in rural community youth. This program should include, but is not limited to:

*providing information on the characteristics of the sample of community youth routinely seen in the academic health center, including actual alcohol consumption of juvenile patients, other risk behaviors, individual risk factors predisposing to problems with alcohol, and individual resilience or other positive/protective factors that may offset or mitigate risk;
*providing comprehensive information on the characteristics of the population of underage drinkers in community-based service settings relevant to primary health care;
*providing comprehensive information on the characteristics of the underage population in the community that is at greatest risk for alcohol-related problems;
*documenting the proportion of adolescents with various characteristics who are served in different venues (e.g. school nurse, pediatrician).
*reviewing the empirical intervention research, evaluating programs for application in rural youth and adapting these as necessary for implementation in the community.

2. Develop the appropriate infrastructure to undertake Phase II. This should include but is not limited to:

*exploring which practitioners in which venues are most likely to interface with the greatest numbers of adolescents;
*evaluating the feasibility that the health center service delivery system and associated entities can increase access to youth and follow them over time, as well as pilot test research-based interventions for them, in particular for those individuals who are at high risk for alcohol-related problems;enhancing alliances between physicians and other health care professionals in the community who interface with youth such as psychologists or dentists;
*describing potential options for partnerships, coalitions, consortia, and other collaborative interactions between the health care entities and community;
*enhancing the community infrastructure as needed to link relevant service sectors both within and outside the academic health center;
*demonstrating the ability to establish the leadership of their primary health care system in mobilizing multiple community sectors to address underage drinking in their area of service.
*demonstrating the ability to implement an empirically-based intervention to address underage drinking in their area of service.