Brief Alcohol Treatment for Women Veterans in Primary Care

Summary

The goal of this study is to develop and test a brief behavioral treatment for women Veterans with alcohol use in primary care. The study involves a development phase, an open trial phase, and a pilot randomized controlled trial. The main questions it aims to answer are:

* Is the treatment feasible and acceptable to women Veteran primary care patients?
* Can the treatment help reduce alcohol use, alcohol-related problems, and improve quality of life? Researchers will compare the new treatment to usual treatment that primary care patients would normally receive. Participants will be asked to participate in either the new behavioral treatment or usual primary care treatment and attend 3 appointments to answer questions about their alcohol use, quality of life, other mental health symptoms, and what they thought of their behavioral treatment.

Conditions

• Alcohol Misuse

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Brief, Integrated Intervention for Women Veterans with Unhealthy Alcohol Use in Primary Care

The intervention consists of 4-6 30-minute behavioral health appointments with a behavioral health provider in an integrated primary care setting. It includes 4 core alcohol-focused appointments focused on providing information and skills to manage unhealthy alcohol use that have been adapted from existing evidence-based treatments in integrated primary care and specialty care. Participants may elect to attend up to 2 additional optional appointments focused on supplemental strategies to manage alcohol use or to address co-occurring mental and behavioral health concerns, including mood, trauma, sleep, and pain.

BEHAVIORAL

Primary care usual care

Primary care usual care consists of universal annual alcohol screening; those who are identified as at-risk receive a brief advice intervention from their primary care provider and may be offered an integrated primary care referral. The brief advice intervention is standardized and triggered automatically by a positive screen. Integrated primary care consists of brief assessment and intervention with licensed, independent behavioral health providers. Patients may decline integrated primary care referrals, complete several appointments, and/or be referred to specialty treatment

Sponsors & Collaborators

• National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA)

  collaborator NIH

• Syracuse VA Medical Center

  lead FED

Principal Investigators

• Katherine A Buckheit, PhD · Veterans Health Research Institute of Central New York, Inc.

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

SINGLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Sex

FEMALE

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2026-10-31

Primary Completion

2028-09-30

Completion

2030-08-31

Countries

• United States

Study Locations