Industry Education Efforts Continue

As hard as it may be to believe, it’s back-to-school time for millions of college students — not to mention their high school counterparts — making it a good time to support the al-bev industry’s efforts to increase student awareness of the dangers of binge drinking and contribute to its reduction on college campuses.

To provide resources and information about drinking to college students, Responsibility.org offers a free, fully digital version of its

award-winning college program Alcohol101+. Created in 2003, the program has been implemented on more than 3,000 college and university campuses to educate students, especially those under the legal drinking age, on the dangers of binge drinking, mitigating risk and the importance of healthy decision-making.

The Alcohol101+ program, which is cost free for users, is tailored to students’ individual needs based on their own experiences with and perceptions of alcohol. This aspect of the program ensures that it is relevant and more valuable to each student.

Recognizing that today’s college students are digital natives, Responsibility.org, under the advisement of experts in the college prevention landscape, has created a highly interactive program designed to increase student awareness of the hazards of overconsumption and ultimately contribute to behavior change by decreasing binge drinking on college campuses. Through interactive and quick-paced digital content, Alcohol101+ covers core alcohol education topics, including:

• Bystander intervention skills.
• Education on the consequences and dangers of binge drinking.
• Blood alcohol content and standard drink education.
• Alcohol’s impact on the developing brain.
• Low-risk drinking strategies and mitigating risk.

College administrators using the program have access to pre- and post-program data and a customizable dashboard with real-time metrics and analytics, while the students receive a personalized feedback report upon completion to help support responsible decision-making about alcohol.

Alcohol101+ is just one example of the programs supported by the beverage alcohol industry that are making a difference in combatting issues such as underage drinking, binge drinking and impaired driving. Responsibility.org — as well as the entire beverage alcohol industry — should be commended for its continuing support of such programs and encouraged to remain on the cutting edge of their development in the future.