NCT05018624

Alcohol Brief Intervention Integrated With Mobile Chat-based Support for Risky Drinkers in Emergency Departments

Alcohol Brief Intervention Integrated With Mobile Chat-based Support for Risky Drinkers in Emergency Departments: a Pragmatic Randomised Controlled Trial

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 632 (actual)
• Sponsor: The University of Hong Kong · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

This study aims to assess the effectiveness of chat-based intervention on reducing risky alcohol consumption to inform clinical practice for providing ABI to risky drinkers attending AED in Hong Kong.

Detailed description

Alcohol use is a major risk factor for non-communicable diseases and 6th leading cause of death and disability-adjusted life years. The prevalence of alcohol consumption has increased since 2008 after introduction of zero tax on alcohol with strength \<30% (e.g., wine and beer) and due to promoting the city as Asia's wine hub. ABI reduced alcohol intake by about 20g/week at 12-month follow-up in primary healthcare populations. Given the relatively low prevalence of risky alcohol drinkers in Hong Kong, testing ABI in clinics may face difficulties in recruitment. Alcohol use is associated with problems such as injury and violence requiring accident and emergency department (AED) services, thus AEDs in Hong Kong are more feasible places to recruit subjects for delivering ABI. Primary hypothesis: The Intervention group has significantly larger reduction of weekly alcohol consumption compared with the Control group at 12-month follow-up Secondary hypotheses: Compared with the Control group, the Intervention group has lower AUDIT scores, fewer episodes of heavy/binge drinking, lower re-attendence at AED and reduced alcohol-related harms at 6-month and 12-month follow-up.

Conditions

• Alcohol Misuse

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Alcohol brief intervention	At baseline, subjects will receive face-to-face or online alcohol brief intervention developed based on the guideline by the World Health Organisation in 5-10 minutes
BEHAVIORAL	12-page health warning leaflet	Nurses will provide information about the consequences of drinking using a 12-page health warning booklet. Benefits of reducing and quit drinking will be emphasized by focusing on improving their perception towards the impacts on health, social problems, risky behaviors, academic performance and financial issues.
BEHAVIORAL	Regular messages through Instant Messaging (IM)	A total of 26 e-messages will be scheduled: once daily for the first week, 3 time/week for subsequent 4 weeks and 1 time/week for the remaining 7 weeks. The frequency will be adjusted according to IM Apps conversation and subject's requests.
BEHAVIORAL	Real-time chat-based support through IM Apps	The chat-based IM support is the extension of baseline ABI and regular e-messages, which aims to provide real-time behavioral and psychosocial support to reduce or quit drinking. It will be personalized according to the subjects' characteristics (gender, drinking pattern and alcoholic drinks preferences), intention to drink and specific questions regarding drinking. Through real-time chatting (text and/or voice), drinkers can acquire information on consequences of drinking and gain social support immediately to reduce intention to drink and alcohol consumption.
BEHAVIORAL	AUDIT score interpretation sheet adapted from the Department of Health of Hong Kong	a diagram explaining drinking behaviour and potential health risks, definitions of "alcohol unit" and "binge drinking", and advise on limiting daily drinking to 2 alcohol units for men and 1 unit for women

Timeline

• Start date: 2022-05-23
• Primary completion: 2024-09-30
• Completion: 2025-03-31
• First posted: 2021-08-24
• Last updated: 2025-08-01

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Hong Kong