Boston, Mass. -- Alcohol-involved motor vehicle crashes kill an estimated 1,200 college students each year. A new report finds significant reductions in driving after drinking and riding with an intoxicated driver on campuses where there are strong campus-community initiatives to prevent binge drinking.

The report by the Harvard School of Public Health appears in the December issue of the journal Traffic Injury Prevention.

The study evaluates the effect on drinking and driving outcomes of the program "A Matter of Degree: The National Effort to Reduce High-Risk Drinking Among Students" (AMOD), a campus-community coalition initiative to reduce binge drinking by college students.

The AMOD program fosters collaboration between universities and their local communities to change environments around campuses that promote heavy alcohol consumption. Examples of strategies that make up an AMOD program include:

• mandatory training for responsible beverage service;
• requiring registration for purchasers of kegs;
• prohibiting the selling of alcohol without a license;
• keeping alcohol-related items out of student bookstores;
• expansion of substance-free residence halls; and
• promotion of alcohol-free activities.

According to Henry Wechsler, Director of the College Alcohol Study and Principal Investigator of the evaluation, "The AMOD approach differs significantly from the traditional intervention efforts on campuses that focus on the individual student through educational or motivational programs. Thus far these efforts have not been found to have any impact."

The problem of heavy drinking is particularly acute among young adults who attend four-year colleges and universities. About one-third of college students nationally report driving after drinking alcohol and about on in 10 college students drove after consuming five or more drinks. College students are more likely to binge drink than their same-aged peers who do not attend college.

The study examined student responses from the AMOD communities--10 geographically diverse college communities monitored from 1997-2001 to evaluate the program's success--and compared them to responses from students attending 32 matched colleges from the national College Alcohol Study.

Additional information about the AMOD evaluation can be found online.

"The results of this report are promising, given the insidious nature of the alcohol problem on college campuses," said Elissa R. Weitzman, from the Harvard School of Public Health and Director of the AMOD evaluation. "Colleges and communities should continue to work together to enact changes that will impact the heavy drinking and potentially save lives."

Schools participating in the AMOD program include: Florida State University; Georgia Institute of Technology; Lehigh University; Louisiana State University; University of Colorado; University of Delaware; University of Iowa; University of Nebraska at Lincoln; University of Vermont; and University of Wisconsin. For more information about AMOD, please visit their website.

AMOD was developed and funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) and is managed by the American Medical Association (AMA). The program is funded through 2008.