PREVENTION OF ALCOHOL-RELATED ACCIDENTS IN THE COMMUNITY

This paper establishes a conceptual and operational basts for developm ent of community prevention programs to reduce alcohol-related acciden ts. A public health perspective of accidents is proposed as the philos ophical basis for local prevention interventions in which accidents ar e viewed as system problems (system outputs, if you will) not simply p roblems caused by a few alcohol-dependent individuals. Since there are no examples of controlled community prevention research projects (tri als) which have demonstrated a reduction in community-level alcohol-re lated accidents, such controlled trials are needed in the future. An e xample of one being developed by the Prevention Research Center, Berke ley, CA is provided. Without such controlled trials, prevention resear ch will be unable to demonstrate that such accidents can actually be r educed. This paper explores the applications of a public health perspe ctive to the prevention of alcohol-involved accidents at the community level including a conceptual model of alcohol-involved trauma and sug gested design, alternative local interventions, possible outcome measu res, and phases for community prevention of alcohol-related accidents.