Development of community strategies supporting brief alcohol advice in three Latin American countries: a protocol

Brief alcohol advice offered to patients was shown to be a clinically- and cost-effective intervention to prevent and manage alcohol-related health harm. However, this intervention is not yet optimally implemented in practice. A suggested strategy to improve the implementation of brief alcohol advice is through community actions which would enhance the environment in which primary healthcare providers must deliver the intervention. However, there has been scarce research conducted to date regarding which community actions have most influence on the adoption and implementation of brief alcohol advice. The current protocol presents the development of a package of community actions to be implemented in three Latin American municipalities, in Colombia, Mexico and Peru. The community actions were based on the Institute for Health Care Improvement’s framework for going to full scale, and include: (i) involvement of a Community Advisory Board, (ii) involvement of a project champion, (iii) adoption mechanisms, (iv) support systems and (v) a communication campaign. By presenting a protocol for developing community actions with input from local stakeholders, this article contributes to advancing the public health field of alcohol prevention by potentially stimulating the sustainable adoption and implementation of brief alcohol advice in routine practice.