Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) and Alcohol Screening and Brief Intervention (Alcohol SBI)

Alcohol Screening and Brief Intervention (ASBI) refers to a public health intervention of routinely screening and identifying patients who may be drinking too much (CDC, 2014). Three in four women wanting to get pregnant as soon as possible report drinking alcohol while there is no known safe amount, no safe type and no safe time to consume alcohol while pregnant or trying to become pregnant (Green et al., 2016). Further, alcohol consumed during pregnancy also known as alcohol-exposed pregnancies (AEP) can lead to birth defects or Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASDs) (Green et al., 2016). Most recently, a study by May and colleagues (2018) found that the prevalence of FASD is conservatively estimated at 11.3 to 50.0 per 1,000 children, or 31.1 to 98.5 per 1,000 children when using a weighted approach.

Nurses can play an integral role in advancing ASBI in multiple sectors of healthcare. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) funded an initiative that brought together universities and national health professional organizations to form discipline-specific workgroups (DSWs). The goal of FASD Prevention Champions is to enthusiastically support alcohol screening and awareness/prevention of FASD within their sphere of professional influence. The below materials were developed with a goal to close the knowledge gap by informing and training both student nurses and nurses in the workforce.

Handout and Infographics

Toolkits

Copyright and Funding for the Above Listed Materials

The above materials are made available to the public subject to the Creative Commons License. Accordingly, they may be downloaded, duplicated, transmitted and otherwise distributed for educational or research purposes only, provided proper credits are given to the University of Pittsburgh School of Nursing.

Use of these materials for commercial purposes is strictly forbidden without the permission or license of the University of Pittsburgh.

These resources were through funds from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, under Cooperative Agreement Numbers DD001143 (University of Alaska Anchorage), DD001144 (University of California, San Diego), and DD001035 (University of Pittsburgh), funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the Department of Health and Human Services.

Questions? 

Contact Ann M. Mitchell, PhD, RN, AHN-BC, FIAAN, FAAN: (412) 624-9005 or Brayden N. Kameg, DNP, RN, CARN