Partnering with the Health Professions to Promote Prevention of an Alcohol-Exposed Pregnancy: Lessons Learned from an Academic–Organizational Collaborative

Leigh Tenkku Lepper, Diane King, Joy Doll, Sandra Gonzalez, Ann Mitchell and Joyce Hartje
Additional contact information
Leigh Tenkku Lepper: School of Social Work, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211, USA
Diane King: Center for Behavioral health Research and Services, University of Alaska Anchorage, Anchorage, AK 99508, USA
Joy Doll: Center for Interprofessional Practice, Education and Research, Creighton University, Omaha, NE 68178, USA
Sandra Gonzalez: Department of Family and Community Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77098, USA
Ann Mitchell: School of Nursing, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15261, USA
Joyce Hartje: Center for the Application of Substance Abuse Technologies (CASAT), University of Nevada, Reno, NV 89557, USA

IJERPH, 2019, vol. 16, issue 10, 1-12

Abstract: Background : Evidence-based strategies exist to train healthcare professionals to ask their patients and clients about alcohol use, and are successful. Implementation of these strategies utilizing a system-level approach has not been conducted nationwide. This case study reports on the success of academic partnerships with national health professional organizations to increase adoption of evidence-based strategies to prevent alcohol-exposed pregnancies. Methods : Authors reviewed and summarized multi-level strategies created as part of the developmental phase of this project in order to report successes and challenges. We applied the three principles of reflection, sense-making, and reciprocal learning, as identified in the practice change literature, to synthesize our experience. Results : There were five primary lessons learned as a result of this work: Development of technology-based training websites requires significant time to design, implement, and test; project ‘mission-drift’ is inevitable, but not necessarily unwelcome; time and effort is required to create and sustain functioning workgroups when there are different organizational cultures; and changing real-world practice is hard to do, yet changing the conversation on screening and brief intervention is possible. Conclusions : Use of multi-level strategies within an academic–professional organization model was successful in promoting awareness and education of healthcare professionals in the prevention of alcohol-exposed pregnancies.

Keywords: alcohol-exposed pregnancy; screening and brief intervention; social–ecological model; academic–professional organization collaborative (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/10/1702/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/10/1702/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:16:y:2019:i:10:p:1702-:d:231197

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().