Importance: In the US, 25% of youths have a chronic medical condition (CMC). Alcohol use is prevalent among youths with a CMC and is associated with treatment nonadherence, simultaneous exposure to contraindicated medications, poor self-care, and elevated rates of progression to heavy and problem use by young adulthood. Preventive interventions targeting these youths are scarce and lack evidence about longer-term risk-stratified effects.
Objective: To evaluate the 12-month effects of a preventive intervention for alcohol use among youths with a CMC reporting baseline no or low-risk alcohol use vs high-risk alcohol use, testing the hypothesis of no difference.
Design, setting, and participants: This presepecified secondary analysis used data from a 2-group, parallel randomized clinical trial of the Take Good Care (TGC) intervention. Convenience samples of youths (aged 14-18 years) with a CMC, such as type 1 diabetes, juvenile idiopathic arthritis, or inflammatory bowel disease, were randomly assigned to the intervention or treatment as usual (TAU) between May 11, 2017, and November 20, 2018, and were followed up for up to 12 months. High-risk alcohol use was defined as heavy episodic (binge) alcohol use in the past 3 months and alcohol-related blackouts, injuries, vomiting, or emergency department visits in the past 12 months. Data were analyzed from September 21, 2023, to February 3, 2024.
Interventions: The self-administered, tablet computer-based TGC intervention was developed with patient and expert input, and it delivers disease-tailored psychoeducational content about the effects of alcohol use on overall health, disease processes, and treatment safety and efficacy.
Main outcomes and measures: The main outcome was self-reported frequency of alcohol use (in days) over the past 3 months, measured by a single validated question. Maximum likelihood methods incorporating all available data were used assuming data missing at random.
Results: The trial included 451 participants (229 female youths [50.8%]), with a mean (SD) age of 16.0 (1.4) years. Of these youths, 410 (90.9%) participated in the 12-month follow-up. At baseline, 52 youths (11.5%) reported high-risk alcohol use. Among participants with high-risk alcohol use, the observed mean (SD) frequency of alcohol use from baseline to the 12-month follow-up decreased in the intervention group (from 6.3 [4.6] to 4.9 [4.3] days) and increased in the TAU group (from 5.5 [4.9] to 9.0 [5.8] days), with an adjusted relative rate ratio of 0.60 (95% CI, 0.38 to 0.94). There were no group differences among youths reporting no or low-risk alcohol use.
Conclusions and relevance: In this trial of a brief chronic illness-tailored preventive intervention, medically vulnerable youths with a high risk of alcohol use and harm decreased alcohol use. These findings support the use of a personalized preventive intervention with this group.
Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02803567.