Empowering Health Care Professionals To Provide Evidence-Based Care
Since its release just over a year ago, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) Healthcare Professional’s Core Resource on Alcohol (HPCR) has been the focus of ongoing efforts to empower health care professionals in providing evidence-based alcohol-related care.
Central to these efforts has been partnering with clinical educators, trainees, and state health departments to create awareness and extend the reach of the resource among emerging and established clinicians. These partnering activities have involved NIAAA outreach to hundreds of health care professional school deans, program directors, residency directors, and state health department leaders nationwide. Recent efforts during summer 2023 included outreach to the 30,000 members of the American Medical Student Association.
To help health care professionals focus on what’s most important to them and their patients, NIAAA added a new Roadmap for Applying the Core Resource to the HPCR in June of this year. The Roadmap sorts HPCR articles broadly into “how-to content” and “context for care” to show how they could be applied in different aspects of clinical practice. It is important to note that all HPCR articles offer free continuing medical education/continuing education (CME/CE) credit for physicians, physician assistants, nurses, psychologists, and pharmacists.
Moving forward, NIAAA will continue partnerships to highlight the HPCR and the importance of delivering evidence-based alcohol-related care by health care providers and health plan organizations. One of these efforts includes a collaboration with the National Committee for Quality Assurance to raise awareness of how the HPCR can help clinicians surmount the challenges they often face in implementing screening practices and follow-up for alcohol use disorder.
For more information about the HPCR, including how to earn up to 10.75 free CME/CE credits, visit https://niaaa.nih.gov/health-professionals-communities/core-resource-on-alcohol.
In this Issue
Incorporating Harm Reduction Into Alcohol Use Disorder Treatment and Recovery
For many years, complete abstinence from alcohol consumption was viewed as the most effective way to recover from alcohol use disorder (AUD) and was a primary outcome of AUD treatment. A large body of evidence, however, suggests that treatment and recovery strategies that reduce heavy alcohol consumption and alcohol-related consequences without complete abstinence can be effective for mitigating the harms associated with alcohol misuse for many individuals.
Scientific Director for the Division of Intramural Clinical and Biological Research Selected for the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism
David Lovinger, Ph.D., has been selected as the Scientific Director of the Division of Intramural Clinical and Biological Research at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA).
National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism Launches an Educational Virtual Reality Experience for Teens
The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) recently launched Alcohol and Your Brain, a virtual reality (VR) module to engage and educate young audiences about how alcohol affects the brain. Designed for Oculus Quest, Quest 2, or Meta Quest Pro headsets, this activity takes users on a virtual rollercoaster ride through the brain, with stops to describe alcohol’s harmful effects on the prefrontal cortex, nucleus accumbens, amygdala, hippocampus, and cerebellum.
The Beauty of #SciArt
“Things I’ve seen through a microscope” is the straightforward way Margaret (Meg) Davis, Ph.D., describes her X, formerly known was Twitter, channel, @BrainsRus. Dr. Davis is a retired National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) neuroscientist and anatomist, who remains dedicated to tweeting about and sharing her fascination with “#SciArt”—the dazzling and colorful scenes visible thanks to innovations in neuroscientific imaging.
Five Questions With Bin Gao, M.D., Ph.D.
Chief, Laboratory of Liver Diseases, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.