Abstract
Brief interventions—defined broadly here as interventions delivered in a circumscribed time frame—are one promising approach for preventing and reducing substance use. This chapter summarizes the different types of brief interventions available for substance-related behavior change, their overall effectiveness, and variability in their effectiveness across settings, populations, and intervention types. Brief interventions share, by definition, a limited amount of contact time; otherwise, they can vary in terms of procedures, materials, delivery personnel, format of delivery, location, dosage, underlying theory of change, and general intervention philosophy. Despite the accumulating evidence base supporting brief interventions as a strategy for preventing and reducing substance use, there are still notable gaps in the research. Importantly, brief interventions do not appear to be universally effective, necessitating additional exploration of mediators and moderators of effects to help identify the mechanisms of change in these interventions and which subpopulations to target with which brief interventions. Other opportunities for future research in this area are discussed, including a focus on core outcome sets and feasibility of implementation across settings.
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Tanner-Smith, E.E., Grant, S.P. (2019). Brief Interventions as Evidence-Based Prevention Strategies. In: Sloboda, Z., Petras, H., Robertson, E., Hingson, R. (eds) Prevention of Substance Use. Advances in Prevention Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00627-3_11
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