CMCA: Communities Mobilizing for Change on Alcohol

Principal Investigator
Alexander Wagenaar, PhD, University of Minnesota

Funding
National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism

Objective
A randomized community trial of a community-organizing intervention that was designed to reduce the accessibility of alcoholic beverages in youths under the legal drinking age.

Method
Data were collected at baseline before random assignment of 15 communities to intervention or control condition and again at follow-up after a 2.5 year intervention. Data collection included in-school surveys of twelfth graders, telephone surveys of 18 to 20 year olds and alcohol merchants, and direct testing of the propensity of alcohol outlets to sell to young buyers. Analyses were based on mixed-model regression, used the community as the unit of assignment, took into account the nesting of individual respondents or alcohol outlets within each community and controlled for relevant covariates.

Results
The CMCA intervention significantly and favorably affected both the behavior of 18 to 20 year olds (effect size = 0.76, P<.01) and the practices of on-sale alcohol establishments (effect size = 1.18, P<.05), may have favorably affected the practices of off-sale alcohol establishments (effect size = 0.32, P=.08), but had little effect on younger adolescents. Alcohol merchants appear to have increased age-identification checking and reduced propensity to sell to minors. 18 to 20 year olds reduced their propensity to provide alcohol to other teens and were less likely to try to buy alcohol, drink in a bar, or consume alcohol.

Conclusion
Community organizing is a useful intervention approach for mobilizing communities for institutional and policy change to improve the health of the population.

Materials
Project policy planning manuals and materials are available by download at the Alcohol Epidemiology Program (AEP) website (http://www.epi.umn.edu/alcohol).

Publications
Wagenaar AC, Murray DM, Gehan JP, et al. Communities mobilizing for change on alcohol: outcomes from a randomized community trial. Journal of Studies on Alcohol (2000) 61:85-94.

Wagenaar AC, Murray DM, Toomey TL, et al. Communities mobilizing for change on alcohol: effects of a randomized trial on arrests and traffic crashes. Addiction (2000) 95(2):209-217.

Wagenaar AC, Gehan JP, Jones-Webb R, et al. Communities mobilizing for change on alcohol: Lessons and results from a 15-community randomized trial. Journal of Community Psychology (1999) 27(3):3159-326.