SBIRT-Plus: Adding Population Health Innovations to Enhance Alcohol Screening and Brief Intervention Effectiveness

Research on alcohol Screening, Brief Intervention and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) suggests that while brief interventions are effective for reducing alcohol and other substance use in medical settings, effects are small and program implementation is difficult and costly. This article describes SBIRT-Plus, which is designed to expand effectiveness and population reach of traditional SBIRT programs. SBIRT-Plus focuses on systems-level issues like social marketing of SBIRT services and interventions via social media and community-based information sources. Older adults could benefit widely from SBIRT-Plus due to frequent healthcare services use and risk of alcohol-medication interactions. But access to such services needs to increase.