National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA)

Target Audience The NIAAA Core Resource on Alcohol CME/CE activities provide CME/CE credit for healthcare professionals including physicians, physician assistants, nurses, pharmacists, and psychologists, as well as other healthcare professionals whose licensing boards accept APA or AMA credits. Others may earn a certificate of completion. Joint Accreditation Statement In support of improving patient care, CME/CE activities offered have been planned...

Alcohol is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality, with harms related to both acute and chronic effects of alcohol contributing to about 5 million emergency department visits and 99,000 deaths in the U.S. each year. There is no perfectly safe level of alcohol consumption, as current research points to health risks including cancer and cardiovascular risks even at low levels of consumption, regardless of beverage type.

Combining alcohol with certain medications, particularly those with sedative effects, can increase the risk of adverse events, including falls, driving accidents, and fatal overdoses.

Alcohol is dually reinforcing because it can both activate the brain’s reward processing system that mediates pleasure and reduce the activity of the brain’s systems that mediate negative emotional states such as stress, anxiety, and emotional pain. Repeated, excessive use of alcohol can lead to the development of addiction, which is associated with reduced reward function and increased activation of brain stress systems. The process of becoming addicted is thus accompanied by a shift in drinking motivation from positive reinforcement to negative reinforcement, during which drinking is motivated by attempts to reduce the emotional discomfort of acute and protracted withdrawal.

Knowing which patient groups are at greater risk for alcohol-related harm can reinforce your efforts to conduct careful screening, assessment, advising, and referral. Risks for alcohol-related harm vary by a wide range of factors, including your patient’s age, gender, sexual minority status, genes, mental health, and exposure to trauma or other stressors.

Show your patients a standard drink chart when asking about their alcohol consumption to encourage more accurate estimates. Drinks often contain more alcohol than people think, and patients often underestimate their consumption. Advise some patients not to drink at all, including those who are managing health conditions that can be worsened by alcohol, are taking medications that could interact with alcohol, are pregnant or planning to become pregnant, or are under age 21.

What is the Core Resource on Alcohol? The Healthcare Professional’s Core Resource on Alcohol consists of 14 interconnected articles covering the basics of what every healthcare professional needs to know about alcohol. The “Core” was developed by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), a part of the National Institutes of Health. NIAAA is the lead federal agency...

Stigma refers to negative beliefs about individuals or groups based on characteristics that may set them apart from others, such as mental health conditions including alcohol use disorder (AUD).

Helping Your Patients with Alcohol-Related Problems. Alcohol contributes to more than 200 health conditions and about 99,000 deaths in the U.S. each year. Yet alcohol-related risks often go unaddressed in healthcare settings.

Alcohol use disorder (AUD) frequently occurs with other mental health disorders, and vice versa. Primary care providers and other clinicians are well positioned to identify these conditions, make informed clinical decisions, and refer patients to specialists, thereby improving treatment outcomes.

With a brief intervention, you can help patients who drink too much to cut back or quit alcohol use as needed.

Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) as “a problematic pattern of alcohol use leading to clinically significant impairment or distress,” and is diagnosed as mild, moderate, or severe based on the number of symptoms, out of a possible 11, in the past 12 months.

With small, incremental steps, you can create and support a better system of care for your patients with alcohol-related problems.

Alcohol screening and brief intervention ranks highly among effective preventive services based on its cost-effectiveness and potential to reduce clinically preventable burden. Screening for heavy drinking can be done easily and effectively if you make it a routine part of care and use a brief tool recommended by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force that identifies people with unhealthy alcohol use.

Most people with AUD can and do recover, and their individual paths to recovery vary widely. By highlighting the likelihood of recovery, you may encourage more patients with AUD to accept treatment or to reduce their drinking with or without treatment.

Takeaways You can maximize patient choice and outcomes by offering a full menu of evidence-based treatment options. Approaches for treating alcohol use disorder (AUD) include behavioral health treatments, FDA-approved AUD medications, and mutual support groups, or a combination of any of these. Behavioral health treatments for AUD can bring lasting positive change. Steer patients in need of referral for behavioral...

For some patients, alcohol treatment referral may not be a single event but instead part of an ongoing process of engagement. You can help patients surmount barriers to following through on a treatment referral by countering the effects of stigma, conveying that treatment can be effective, and offering a range of choices for care.

The size of the older adult population is increasing rapidly. Alcohol use among older adults is also increasing . Data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health indicate that approximately 20 percent of adults aged 60-64 and around 10 percent over age 65 report current binge drinking. Older adults can experience a variety of problems from drinking alcohol...

Open Funding Opportunities Omnibus Solicitation NIAAA offers funding through the PHS 2023-2 Omnibus Solicitation program announcement, as well as targeted Notices of Funding Opportunities (NOFOs) and several resources for additional technical assistance, commercialization R&D support, and training programs. Standard due dates are April 5, September 5, and January 5 or the next business day. SBIR ( PA-23-231 ) (R43/R44 Clinical...

DHHS, NIH, NIAAA AGENDA 166 th Meeting of the NATIONAL ADVISORY COUNCIL ON ALCOHOL ABUSE AND ALCOHOLISM Tuesday, May 7th, 2024 Hybrid Meeting In Person 6700B Rockledge Drive, Conference Rooms A,B,C -- Bethesda, MD 20817 NIH Video Cast https://videocast.nih.gov/watch=54694 11:00 AM to 3:30 PM: OPEN TO THE PUBLIC (HYBRID) 11:00 AM CALL TO ORDER AND ROLL CALL George Koob, Ph.D...