ANTECEDENT Project Comes to a Successful Close 

This month, ORPRN celebrates its family of primary care clinics who participated in project ANTECEDENT (pArtNerships To Enhance alCohol scrEening, treatment, anD intErveNTion) led by Dr. Melinda Davis and Dr. Brigit Hatch.  In 2019, ORPRN was one of 6 sites nationally to receive funding from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to work with primary care practices to reduce unhealthy alcohol (UAU) use. This funding supported primary care clinics with data reporting, clinical workflows, and integrating Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) into routine care for patients. 

Clinics dedicated 15 months to working with our practice facilitator team and received free Health Information Technology (HIT) support. ORPRN collaborated with SBIRT Oregon to provide foundational training and resources to providers and staff and partnered with the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) Transformation Center to align project outreach and support with Oregon’s Coordinated Care Organization (CCO) SBIRT metric. Since launching the project, the team enrolled 75 primary care practices across Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. Participating clinics felt that ANTECEDENT gave them dedicated time to think about UAU, built quality improvement capacity, helped them establish workflows, increased health equity in screening, and increased staff motivation.  Clinics chose to work on a variety of goals, including data capture and reporting in their electronic health record for UAU screening. 

Although, this month marks the end of project ANTECEDENT, this work won’t end here. The Oregon Health Authority’s Rethink the Drink initiative is continuing to share information about the effects of UAU on physical and mental health. The team is preparing a number of scientific manuscripts that will share results from this work. Additionally, the team published the study protocol within PLOS ONE and has two manuscripts under review. None of this would be possible without the clinics who dedicated their time to this work. We hope to share additional results in upcoming publications this fall.