Effectiveness of Screening, Brief Intervention and Referral Approaches in Organizational - Based Mitigation of Alcohol Abuse at Kenya Wildlife Services, Kenya

Abstract

Alcohol abuse is a major global and public health concern due to its significant impact on an individual's health and the society at large. The objective of this study was to determine the effectiveness of screening, brief intervention and referral (SBIRT) approaches in mitigating alcohol abuse in the workplace. The study was conducted at the Kenya Wildlife Services (KWS), which was chosen randomly from a pool of parastatals that had reported to the National Campaign Against Alcohol and Drug Abuse (NACADA) on their alcohol and drug abuse ADA prevention activities. The study adopted a quasi-experimental design with pre- and post-test utilizing both quantitative and qualitative data collection methods. Clustered simple random sampling technique was used to get three study regions from among the eight KWS geographical regions. Data was collected using socio-demographic questionnaires, focus group discussion guides and standardized screening tools for alcohol and other drugs. The standardized tools that included Alcohol Use Disorder Identification Test (AUDIT) and Alcohol, Smoking and Substance Involvement Test (ASSIST) were used both at pre- and post-test stages. Quantitative data was analyzed using SPSS version 21 applying T-test, chi square test and logistic regression models. Qualitative data was analyzed by grouping the themes. Results indicate that lifetime prevalence of alcohol use at KWS was 60.3% while the prevalence of alcohol abuse was 44.3%. The prevalence of alcohol dependence was 15.1% with gender and age being risk factors associated with alcohol abuse. The results also indicate that SBIRT was effective in reducing alcohol abuse prevalence or severity of the problem across all social-demographic characteristics with a statistical significant difference of p<0.0001.