Alcohol consumption among college students remains a critical public health problem driven by high-risk social dynamics and university culture. National datasets establish broad trends, but fail to address the potential for variability across specific academic environments.

We will compare alcohol consumption patterns within the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s School of Public Health and Health Sciences (SPHHS) against national collegiate trends. Specifically, we aim to investigate whether SPHHS students, who receive specialized public health education, are applying their knowledge of health risks to inform their own behaviors and choices. We will compare our survey data to data from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (NES-ARC), a nationally representative survey of U.S. adults conducted in 2001–2002. This survey data indicates that 73.1% of young adults reported past-year alcohol use and 39.6% reported heavy episodic drinking, with slightly higher rates observed among college students compared with nonstudents. We will measure alcohol intake among SPHHS students using the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT), and will compare students’ reported drinking behaviors with data from the NES-ARC survey.

National data provides a baseline for college student drinking rates, and we hypothesize that SPHHS students will exhibit lower rates of alcohol use than the national average. This hypothesis is based on what we describe as a "curriculum effect," where health-centered education fosters protective attitudes against substance misuse. These findings will inform targeted campus interventions and help bridge the gap between public health knowledge and personal behavioral change.