Gender Informed or Gender Ignored? Opportunities for Gender Transformative Approaches in Brief Alcohol Interventions on College Campuses

Abstract

Brief alcohol interventions are an effective strategy for reducing harmful and risky alcohol use and misuse. Many effective brief alcohol interventions include information and advice about an individual’s alcohol use, changing their use, and assistance in developing strategies and goals to help reduce their use. Emerging research suggests that brief interventions can also be expanded to address multiple health outcomes; recognizing that the flexible nature of these approaches can be helpful in tailoring information to specific population groups. This scoping review synthesizes evidence on the inclusion of sex and gender in brief alcohol interventions on college campuses, highlighting available evidence on gender responsiveness in these interventions. Furthermore, this scoping review offers strategies on how brief alcohol interventions can be gender transformative, thereby enhancing the effectiveness of brief alcohol interventions as harm reduction and prevention strategies, and in promoting gender equity.

Missing in Action: Sex and Gender in Substance Use Research

“…Once we sifted through these, we found that the muddy conceptual use of sex and/or gender prevented us from confidently carrying out our intended overarching systematic review. Instead, based on this material, we developed several scoping reviews [5,16,18,19] and one small systematic review [17] because terms were either misused or imprecise, or in some cases conflated or used in contradictory ways in a single article. Our intention for systematically surveying the current evidence on sex, gender and substance use was undermined because precise engagement with sex and gender in research was, in essence, missing in action.…”

“…Focusing on fathers and caregiving is a step toward more gender-transformative approaches to smoke-free home initiatives that have traditionally focused on mothers. Wolfson et al [19] directly assess the gender-transformative impact of brief interventions on alcohol, via a cogent sex and gender analysis of existing literature in that area. Similarly Stinson et al [16] address the gendered use of technology to respond to substance use treatment and interventions.…”

“…While the past twenty years has seen a rise in interest and application of sex and gender science in health, the substance use field has been slow to insist on the inclusion of these concepts. This special issue [5,[9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23] is aimed at providing a remedy for this lack, and more importantly, to provide examples of the impact of sex and gender in a range of substances, cultures, populations and contexts.…”

“…These articles address concepts [5], different substances such as alcohol [12,19,23], cannabis [5,17,18], illegal drugs [13], nicotine [11,12], opioids [14], and multi drug use [10], populations such as gay and bisexual men [13], fathers [20], mothers [15], pregnant women [9,23], patients [9,17] and adolescents [14]. They address interactions with interpersonal violence [22], treatment responses [21], abortion policy [23], other harms [12] in a range of settings in countries including Spain, Scotland, Turkey, Canada, China, Taiwan, and the USA.…”

“…They address interactions with interpersonal violence [22], treatment responses [21], abortion policy [23], other harms [12] in a range of settings in countries including Spain, Scotland, Turkey, Canada, China, Taiwan, and the USA. All of the articles address some aspect of sex or gender, interactions between sex and gender, or gender-transformative responses [19] and all contextualize the discussion in a range of cultures and settings. Taken together, they provide a wide range of illustrations of how sex and gender affect both substance use and our responses to it, as well as how research can better address these concepts to derive important and meaningful evidence on which to build treatment and policy.…”