- Design
- Randomised controlled trial, primary care, Brazil
- Population
- 151 women with AUDIT scores of 8–19 (risky or harmful drinking)
- Primary outcome
- Change in AUDIT score from baseline to 24 months
- Effect
- AUDIT fell over the first 6 months, attenuating thereafter; controls rose
A randomised trial enrolled 151 women with risky or harmful drinking (AUDIT 8–19) from four primary-care clinics in São Paulo, assigning them to a nurse-delivered telephone brief intervention or feedback alone, with follow-up to 24 months.
AUDIT scores fell in the intervention group over the first six months, while the control group's scores rose over time. The benefit attenuated beyond six months, which the authors read as a case for booster contacts rather than a single session.
The transferable point is that a short, nurse-delivered, telephone intervention is cheap, scalable and works at least in the medium term — well suited to resource-limited primary care, including in India, where task-shared delivery is realistic. The caveat is durability: plan a follow-up or booster rather than treating one conversation as sufficient.
- A nurse-delivered telephone brief intervention lowered risky drinking over the first six months.
- Untreated controls drank more over time, widening the gap early on.
- The effect faded after six months, suggesting booster contacts are needed.
- The approach is low-cost and scalable for routine, task-shared primary care.
Why it matters
It shows screening plus a brief phone intervention can shift drinking in women, but that one contact is not enough to hold the gain.
Don't overread it
A single-city trial of 151 women reporting score trajectories, not a long-term outcome trial — the medium-term benefit is real but modest and not durable on its own.
The statistics, in plain English
The trial reports how AUDIT scores moved over time rather than a single effect size; the key signal is that the gain appeared early and then narrowed, which is why follow-up contact matters.
Read the rest in the app
You have read your two free briefings this month. The app carries all 27 specialties, every morning, free — and this finding is waiting in it.
Scan to keep reading on your phone. No account needed to start.
Tomorrow morning, before your first patient
One edition a day for family medicine, written by the desk, every claim tied to its paper. Six minutes.
Get the app — free