April 2, 2014
Dave Gustafson, Ph.D.
Director, Center for Health Enhancement Systems Studies (CHESS)
and NIATx
This April marks the National
Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence’s 28th Alcohol
Awareness Month, “Help for Today. Hope for Tomorrow.” NCADD devotes this
month every year to reducing stigma and increasing awareness about alcohol
addiction. NCADD’s message is that alcoholism is a serious illness and not a
choice. This year’s theme on preventing underage drinking is a reminder about
starting early in educating our children on the dangers of alcohol abuse.
What’s interesting to me is that probably a lot more people
are hearing about Alcohol Awareness Month today than back in 1987, when NCADD
started the campaign. In 1987, radio, TV, and print media were the main ways to
build awareness.
Today, the Internet and social media are spreading NCADD’s message
faster and farther. Through Facebook, Twitter, and email, more people in more
places can participate easily in alcohol awareness discussions and activities. My
guess is that this translates into an exponential increase in awareness and
activities and that more schools, parents, churches and communities will be
getting the word out.
The Internet is an incredible tool for sharing information,
and with technology changing at breakneck
speed we may be at just the start of huge technological innovations. I’ve heard
that we are in the first minute of the first day of the digital revolution.
It’s hard to even imagine what might be in store for us just a year from today.
Public information campaigns like Alcohol Awareness Month
use the Internet to increase awareness. But increasing awareness doesn’t solve
the problem. We need to equip people with effective tools to manage their
chronic conditions. How do we do something about the problem once we’ve raised
awareness?
And here again, Internet technology offers an answer.
Back in 2003 when we started to look at ways to improve the
treatment system—with the Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation grant that created NIATx—I
talked to a lot of researchers and policy makers who said that the problem was “not
enough people.” There also seemed to be a general feeling that having more
counselors would give more people access to treatment.
But as an engineer (stay with me now), my first thought was
that addiction treatment is incredibly labor-intensive, and that almost any
industry that builds things (I was thinking of treatment as a product) doesn’t
ask, “How can we get more people?” They ask instead—“How can we do more with
what we already have?”
I never thought that “more people” was the answer to
improving the addiction treatment system. I thought we needed to ask different
questions: “How can we supplement the work that people are already doing? How
can we reduce repetitive tasks? How can we use other existing resources to meet
our goals?”
Don’t get me wrong—people are great. (I’m even married to
one and she’s pretty wonderful.) But they have limited memory and have to deal
with competing demands like eating and sleeping and even taking a vacation now
and then. And in the treatment field (as in other fields) counselor skill and
the quality of care they provide varies.
Enter the Internet. While some have raised concerns about
new mobile health systems reducing or eliminating the human factor, the
Internet actually supplements the human factor.
People suffering from alcoholism and other SUDs need emotional and
social support to recover. A counselor can provide some of that support once a
week or so—but an Internet-based social support group makes it available 24/7.
Now it’s possible for a teen in small Iowa farming community to connect at any
time of day or night with someone in his support network of people of different
ages and backgrounds from across the country, all united in their goal to
embrace a life in recovery.
That’s just one example of how technology is really a
facilitator, an extension of the human support that a counselor and groups such
as AA provide. With unlimited time and energy, technology is an addition, not a
replacement.
NCADD’s Alcohol Awareness Month reminds us that alcoholism
is a chronic disease; like other chronic conditions it requires using various
resources to make a difference. Technology-based tools increase the resources
available to help people manage their conditions. These rapidly evolving
innovations offer great potential to combat the devastating consequences of
alcohol and other drugs on individuals, families, and communities.
David H. Gustafson, Ph.D., is Research Professor of
Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and
director of the Center
for Health Enhancement Systems Studies, which includes NIATx. His
interests in decision, change, and information theory come together in the
design of systems and tools to help individuals and organizations make
effective changes. Dr. Gustafson leads a research team that has developed A-CHESS, a
smartphone-based health system for recovery support and relapse
prevention.
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