Drinkaware today (January 15) announced a new partnership with Morrisons to roll out a “free drinking check” across all the supermarket’s 117 in-store pharmacies in the UK, allowing pharmacists to “assess people’s drinking habits”.
Customers will be offered to take a “quick three-minute online quiz...to help [them] understand the impact of their drinking habits on their health”, the alcohol harm charity said.
Read more: Morrisons launches ‘on-demand’ online pharmacy service
The quiz includes 10 multiple-choice questions about alcohol use and patients must score themselves between 0 and 4 on each, it explained.
The scores are added together and the higher the score, “the greater the likelihood that you are drinking in a risky or harmful way,” the charity said.
“Bespoke training”
Participating pharmacists will receive “bespoke training” from Drinkaware on “how to use the drinking check” service, which offers “tailored advice and support for those who want to moderate their drinking”, it added.
As part of the initiative, posters and leaflets will be distributed across all Morrisons in-store pharmacies “to encourage customers to check their drinking”.
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Drinkaware chief executive Karen Tyrell said that it is “crucial [to] reach as many people as possible” with the service.
“By pharmacies offering the drinking check to customers as a way to assess their drinking, it’s a step towards normalising the regular checking of drinking habits,” she added.
“People routinely visit the doctors to check their blood pressure or cholesterol, so why shouldn’t the same apply to alcohol,” Tyrell said.
“Drinking check”
And head of Morrisons pharmacy and popular services John Parry said the supermarket chain is “pleased” to be working with Drinkaware.
“The drinking check is based on the internationally recognised World Health Organization (WHO) alcohol use disorders identification test (AUDIT) that is used by medical professionals...to check the risk of alcohol-related problems, including alcohol dependence,” the charity said.
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It comes as Morrisons announced earlier this month that it has partnered with digital pharmacy Phlo to launch the “Morrisons Clinic”, an “online private prescription service” that delivers customers’ medicine in as little as 24 hours.
According to the supermarket, the new service allows patients in England to access their medication “quickly, discretely and safely”.
