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Introduction: Low-resourced settings often lack personnel and infrastructure for alcohol use disorder treatment. We culturally adapted a Brief Negotiational Interview (BNI) for Emergency Department injury patients, the "Punguza Pombe Kwa Afya Yako (PPKAY)" ("Reduce Alcohol For Your Health") in Tanzania. This study aimed to evaluate the feasibility of a pragmatic randomized adaptive controlled trial of the PPKAY intervention., Materials and Methods: This feasibility trial piloted a single-blind, parallel, adaptive, and multi-stage, block-randomized controlled trial, which will subsequently be used to determine the most effective intervention, with or without text message booster, to reduce alcohol use among injury patients. We reported our feasibility pilot study using the Reach, Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation, Maintenance (RE-AIM) framework, with recruitment and retention rates being our primary and secondary outcomes. We enrolled adult patients seeking care for an acute injury at the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center in Tanzania if they (1) exhibited an Alcohol Use Disorder Identification Test (AUDIT) ≥8, (2) disclosed alcohol use prior to injury, or (3) had a breathalyzer ≥0.0 on arrival. Intervention arms were usual care (UC), PPKAY, PPKAY with standard text booster, or a PPKAY with a personalized text booster., Results: Overall, 181 patients were screened and 75 enrolled with 80% 6-week, 82.7% 3-month and 84% 6-month follow-up rates showing appropriate Reach and retention. Adoption measures showed an overwhelmingly positive patient acceptance with 100% of patients perceiving a positive impact on their behavior. The Implementation and trial processes were performed with high rates of PPKAY fidelity (76%) and SMS delivery (74%). Intervention nurses believed Maintenance and sustainability of this 30-minute, low-cost intervention and adaptive clinical trial were feasible., Conclusions: Our intervention and trial design are feasible and acceptable, have evidence of good fidelity, and did not show problematic deviations in protocol. Results suggest support for undertaking a full trial to evaluate the effectiveness of the PPKAY, a nurse-driven BNI in a low-income country., Trial Registration: Trial registration number NCT02828267. https://classic.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02828267., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2023 Staton et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Background: The Kilimanjaro region has one of the highest levels of reported alcohol intake per capita in Tanzania. Age at first drink has been found to be associated with alcohol problems in adulthood, but there is less information on the age of first drink in the Kilimanjaro region and its associations with alcohol-related consequences later in life. Furthermore, local alcohol cost and availability may influence the prevalence of alcohol use and alcohol use disorders., Methods: Data on the age of first drink, alcohol use disorder identification tool (AUDIT), number and type of alcohol consequences (DrInC), and perceived alcohol at low cost and high availability for children and adolescents were collected from an alcohol and health behavior survey of injury patients (N = 242) in Moshi, Tanzania. Generalized linear models were used to test age at first drink, perceived alcohol cost and availability, and their association with the AUDIT and DrInC scores, and current alcohol use, respectively., Results: Consuming alcohol before age 18 was significantly associated with higher AUDIT and DrInC scores, with odds ratios of 1.22 (CI: 1.004, 1.47) and 1.72 (CI: 1.11, 2.63), respectively. Female gender is strongly associated with less alcohol use and alcohol consequences, represented by an odds ratio of 3.70 (CI: 1.72, 8.33) for an AUDIT score above 8 and an odds ratio of 3.84 (CI: 2.13, 6.67) with the DrInC score. Perceived high availability of alcohol for children is significantly related to higher alcohol use quantity, with the odds ratio of 1.6 (CI: 1.17, 2.20)., Conclusions: The first use of alcohol before the age of 18 is associated with higher alcohol use and alcohol-related adverse consequences. In Tanzania, age at first drink is an important target for interventions aiming to prevent negative alcohol-related consequences later in life., (© 2020 by the Research Society on Alcoholism.)

Annually, alcohol causes 3.3 million deaths; countless more alcohol-related injury patients are treated in emergency departments (EDs) worldwide. Studies show that alcohol-related injury patients reduce their at-risk alcohol-use behavior with a brief negotiational interview (BNI) in the ED. This project aims to identify potential perceived barriers to implementing a BNI in Tanzania. A knowledge, attitude, and practice questionnaire was piloted and administered to all emergency department health care practitioners, including physicians, advanced medical officers, and nurses. The questionnaire included the Perceived Alcohol Stigma (PAS) Scale. The survey was self-administered in English, the language of health care instruction, with a Swahili translation available if preferred. Data were analyzed with relative and absolute frequencies and Spearman's correlation. Thirty-four (100%) health care practitioners completed the survey. Our results found positive attitudes toward addressing alcohol misuse (88%), but very poor knowledge of recommended alcohol-use limits (24%). Participants were willing to discuss alcohol use (88%) and to screen (71%) for alcohol-use disorders. Most health care practitioners report significant stigma against those with alcohol-use disorders (39% discrimination, 53% devaluation, 71% either). Counseling patients about high-risk alcohol use was directly and positively associated with at-risk alcohol and counseling education and believing it was common to ask patients about tobacco and alcohol use; it was negatively associated with believing it was 'not my role' or that knowing about alcohol use 'won't make a difference'. Stigma was negatively and indirectly associated with counseling patients. In conclusion, in an ED in Tanzania, health care practitioners have positive attitudes toward addressing at-risk alcohol use, and endorsed having training in alcohol misuse in school. Unfortunately, participants did not demonstrate knowledge of recommended alcohol limit guidelines. Similarly, among practitioners, there is a significant discrimination and devaluation stigma against those who misuse alcohol. These factors must be addressed prior to a successful implementation of an alcohol harm reduction intervention., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Background: Alcohol use in resource-limited settings results in significant morbidity and mortality. These settings lack the necessary specialty-trained personnel and infrastructure. Therefore, implementing evidence-based interventions from high-income settings, like a brief negotiational intervention (BNI) for alcohol, will require rapid production of evidence of effectiveness to guide implementation priorities. Thus, this study describes a clinical trial protocol to rapidly optimize and evaluate the impact of a culturally adapted BNI to reduce alcohol-related harms and alcohol consumption among injury patients.Methods: Our pragmatic, adaptive, randomized controlled trial (PRACT) is designed to determine the most effective intervention approach to reduce hazardous alcohol use among adult (≥18 years old) in acute (< 24 h) injury patients. Our culturally adapted, nurse-delivered, intervention (PPKAY) has been augmented with evidence-based, culturally appropriate standards and will be evaluated as follows. Stage 1 of the trial will determine if PPKAY, either with a standard short-message-service (SMS) booster or with a personalized SMS booster is more effective than usual care (UC). While optimizing statistical efficiency, Stage 2 drops the UC arm to compare the PPKAY with a standard SMS booster to PPKAY with a personalized SMS booster. Finally, in Stage 3, the more effective arm in Stage 2 is compared to PPKAY without an SMS booster. The study population is acute injury patients who present to Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre, Tanzania, who (1) test alcohol positive by breathalyzer upon arrival; (2) have an Alcohol Use Disorder Identification Test of 8 or above; and/or (3) have reported drinking alcohol prior to their injury. Outcome measures will be evaluated for all arms at 3, 6, 9, 12, and 24 months. The primary outcome for the study is the reduction of the number of binge drinking days in the 4 weeks prior to follow-up. Secondary outcomes include alcohol-related consequences, measured by the Drinker Inventory of Consequences.Discussion: The findings from this study will be critically important to identify alcohol harm reduction strategies where alcohol research and interventions are scarce. Our innovative and adaptive trial design can transform behavior change research and identify the most effective nurse-driven intervention to be targeted for integration into standard care.Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04535011 . Registered on September 1, 2020. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]