Reducing alcohol related harm experienced by Indigenous Australians: identifying opportunities for Indigenous primary health care services.

OBJECTIVE

Identify key issues and opportunities relating to the dissemination of cost-effective interventions for alcohol in Indigenous-specific settings.

METHODS

Update previous reviews of the Indigenous alcohol literature, particularly in relation to intervention and dissemination studies aimed at identifying and integrating into routine clinical care those strategies that are most cost-effective in reducing alcohol-related harm.

RESULTS

The harmful use of alcohol has been identified as a major public health issue, which has a disproportionately high negative impact on Indigenous Australians. While the disproportionately high burden of harm borne by Indigenous Australian communities is well documented in descriptive studies, attempts to redress this imbalance through well controlled intervention and dissemination studies appear to have been inadequate to date. There is compelling evidence from the non-Indigenous community that brief intervention is an effective treatment for harmful alcohol use, compared to the relatively lower levels of evidence for primary and tertiary level interventions. The effectiveness of brief intervention for alcohol in Indigenous Australian communities should, therefore, be examined.

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

An opportunity exists to implement brief intervention into Indigenous primary health care settings, as an evidence-based strategy using established resources. There is the possibility that such Indigenous-specific health services research will lead the dissemination field in demonstrating how the implementation process can be successfully tailored to specific and defined clinical settings.