Ben Fitzpatrick
Ecological Systems Modeling of College Drinking
Abstract
Heavy drinking among college students remains a pervasive
problem that places students at considerable risk for a variety of
negative outcomes. Over the past several decades considerable public
and institutional resources have been dedicated to addressing the
problem. There is growing interest in the public health and policy area
for environmental solutions involving policies to change alcohol
environments that lead to problem drinking. In this talk we describe
dynamical systems models of college populations in terms of drinking
behavior. We consider both deterministic and stochastic compartmental
models. We will also present parameter estimation results in which the
model is compared to survey data from colleges and universities across
the US, and we will discuss some implications for changes in the minimum legal drinking age.
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