Med School gift a corker

The Dartmouth Medical School's alcohol education program, Project Cork, has been awarded $1 million by the Joan B. Kroc Foundation. The gift will help expand national efforts to promote education and training of medical professionals in the diagnosis and treatment of alcoholism and other chemical dependencies.

Project Cork was established at Dartmouth in 1978 through a grant from Operation Cork, a program of the Kroc Foundation. The project's original charge was to develop and implement an integrated curriculum on alcohol and alcoholism at Dartmouth Medical School, recognizing the issues as important in virtually all areas of medicine and as the major untreated public health problem one which touches one in four families. Project Cork undertook as well to explore innovative educational techniques; to better understand the issues underlying students' willingness and ability to deal with alcohol-impaired patients and their families; and to establish a resource center of alcohol-related materials.

The new gift will fund the establishment of the Project Cork Institute, to continue these efforts on a national basis. The curriculum and programs developed at Dartmouth will serve as models for national programs. In addition, the Project Cork Institute plans to continue developing pilot programs, such as a new one to enhance the identification of drinking problems in hospitalized patients and a proposed one to involve medical students in an intoxicated drivers' intervention program; to hold a national invitational conference on "Alcohol and the College Campus" later during 1984—85; to expand its resource services, particularly its database and its bimonthly newsletter; and to offer workshops and consulting services to a variety of other institutions and organizations.

Joan B. Kroc, in announcing the gift, praised the Dartmouth Medical School's "long record of productive cooperation, particularly in the area of medical education and alcoholism."