Developing a new Get Healthy Service program on reducing risky alcohol consumption

Abstract

Risky alcohol use has significant individual health and social impacts, and is related to short-and long-term harm, including injuries, accidents, liver diseases, some cancers, cardiovascular diseases and alcohol dependence. The Get Healthy Information & Coaching Service (GHS) is a free telephone coaching service supporting adults 16 years or older to reduce weight, improve nutrition and increase physical activity. Tailored programs are available for Aboriginal people, pregnant women and people at risk of type 2 diabetes. The GHS provides an opportunity to implement a specific program for participants wishing to reduce or cease their alcohol consumption. This paper describes the processes used to develop an Alcohol Program for the GHS. It outlines the contributions from clinical and program experts, the evidence base for the program's development, clinical screening tools, training for health coaches and referral processes for participants. The Alcohol Program has the potential to provide effective coaching to adults to voluntarily reduce short-and long-term risky alcohol consumption. BackgroundThe Australian guidelines to reduce health risks from drinking alcohol (2009) recommend that, for healthy women and men, drinking no more than two standard drinks of alcohol on any given day reduces the lifetime risk of harm from alcohol-related injury or disease (Guideline 1). To reduce the likelihood of risk from a single occasion of drinking, the guidelines recommend consuming four or fewer standard drinks (Guideline 2).1 Alcohol consumption has been associated with a range of health-related harms, as well as a high economic cost arising from alcohol misuse.2 Collins and Lapsley calculated that the total cost to Australia from alcohol-related harm was $15.3 billion in 2004-05. 3 The New South Wales (NSW) Auditor-General estimated the cost of alcohol-related abuse to NSW Government services at $1.03 billion in 2010. 4 The NSW state health plan: towards 2021 has a stated target of reducing drinking at levels posing lifetime risk (Guideline 1) to below 25% by 2015.