Let’s Talk Materials Toolkit

For Health Care Providers

What to know

  • Messaging about alcohol use during pregnancy can be challenging. Misconceptions continue to exist in the media and among healthcare professionals and the public about this issue.
  • These tools can help healthcare providers talk about this topic in a nonjudgmental, nonstigmatizing way.

About this toolkit

CDC recently funded research to assess healthcare professional and patient attitudes about alcohol use during pregnancy. This research also examined messaging and approaches to encourage conversations about alcohol use during pregnancy and the use of alcohol screening and brief intervention (SBI). These findings were used to create a communication guide for partners and a suite of "Let's Talk" materials for both healthcare professionals and patients.

Let’s Talk materials

Communication guide

The guide is intended to support CDC and partner organizations in consistently communicating evidence-based messages about alcohol use during pregnancy, fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASDs), and alcohol SBI. The guide summarizes research on healthcare professional and patients' attitudes and preferences for messaging. It also shares approaches to encourage alcohol SBI and conversations about alcohol use during pregnancy.

Materials for Healthcare Professionals

Materials for Patients

Content Source
National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities
About This Page
Published: May 15, 2024
Updated: April 22, 2025

This page was last updated on this date. Updates may include minor edits, image changes, or other modifications to page content.

Reviewed: August 14, 2026

The information on this page was last reviewed by subject matter experts to ensure accuracy.