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Alcohol misuse costs the UK an estimated £21 billion per year, including costs to the NHS in treating alcohol-related disease and injuries and the costs to society of family breakdown, unemployment and crime. The majority of this cost comes from hazardous drinkers (those drinking more than the recommended amounts but not yet experiencing alcohol-related harms) and harmful drinkers (those drinking more than recommended and experiencing alcohol-related harms but without dependency).
DIAMOND is an NIHR CLAHRC funded feasibility trial of HeLP Alcohol (Healthy Living for People who use Alcohol), a web-based alcohol treatment programme aimed at reducing alcohol consumption in hazardous and harmful drinkers. The intervention uses tailored text messages, emails or phone calls as prompts to increase the number of times participants log-on to the website and to encourage behaviour change. The comparator in the trial is face-to-face treatment with alcohol counsellors based in community alcohol services.
The aim of this feasibility study is to examine the recruitment, retention and demographics of people consenting to participate in the trial, the practicalities of delivering prompts, participant satisfaction with the intervention and trial methods, and the ease of collecting outcome data via the website. These outcomes will then be used to inform a fully-powered randomised controlled trial to test the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of HeLP-Alcohol. If proven effective the web-based intervention could improve access to treatment for hazardous and harmful drinkers, lead to cost savings for the NHS and allow resources to be focused on harder to reach groups, therefore helping to reduce health inequalities.
To visit the trial website follow the link below.