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Alcohol - Alcohol-related Chronic Disease Deaths

Summary Indicator Report Data View Options

This is the AlcoholRelatedDthChronic.RacEth graph narrative.

Alcohol-related Chronic Disease Deaths by County, New Mexico, 2016-2020

In general, males are more at risk than females for alcohol-related chronic disease death. Male rates are 2-3 times higher than female rates, across all racial/ethnic groups. American Indians are most at risk among the race/ethnic groups, with both total rates and male and female rates more than twice the corresponding state rates. As mentioned earlier, Hispanic males are also at elevated risk.
Rates are high in the American Indian and Hispanic populations in certain counties. It is worth noting the considerable variation across counties in American Indian alcohol-related chronic disease death rates.

Why Is This Important?

Chronic heavy drinking (defined as drinking, on average, more than two drinks per day for men, and more than one drink per day for women) often is associated with alcoholism or alcohol dependence, and can cause or contribute to a number of diseases, including alcoholic liver cirrhosis. For the past 15 years, New Mexico's death rate from alcohol-related chronic disease has consistently been first or second in the nation, and 1.5 to two times the national rate. The national death rate from alcohol-related chronic disease in 2015 (13.9) was the same as that in 1990. In contrast, New Mexico's rate increased 52 percent from 1990 to 2015. In 2019, New Mexico alcohol-related chronic disease death rate (37.3) was more than twice the national rate (16.3). Additionally, ARDI updated the analysis criteria in 2019 creating adjustments in previously reported data.

Definition

Alcohol-related chronic disease death is defined as the number of chronic disease deaths attributed to alcohol per 100,000 population. The alcohol-related chronic disease death rates reported here are based on definitions and alcohol-attributable fractions from the CDC's Alcohol-Related Disease Impact (ARDI) website (http://apps.nccd.cdc.gov/ardi/Homepage.aspx).

Data Sources

How the Measure is Calculated

Numerator:Number of alcohol-related chronic disease deaths in New Mexico
Denominator:New Mexico population

Evidence-based Practices

There is a large body of evidence on effective strategies to prevent excessive alcohol use and alcohol-related harm. The following list summarizes the evidence-based prevention strategies that are well-recommended by experts; and that could be more widely or completely implemented in New Mexico to reduce our alcohol-related problems: http://ibis.health.state.nm.us/docs/Evidence/EvidenceBasedExcessiveAlcoholUsePrevention.pdf To access this list, please copy and paste the URL into your browser. For more information on this topic, see the "Evidence-based Practices" section of the Alcohol-Related Deaths indicator report (http://ibis.health.state.nm.us/indicator/important_facts/AlcoholRelatedDth.html).

Other Objectives

Substance Abuse Epidemiology Report Indicator, New Mexico Community Health Status Indicator (CHSI)

Available Services

Doctors, nurses and other health professionals should screen all adult patients and counsel those who drink too much to drink less. This is called alcohol screening and brief intervention (A-SBI). A-SBI can reduce how much alcohol a person drinks on an occasion by 25%. A-SBI is recommended by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), the Community Preventive Services Task Force (Community Guide), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), and the World Health Organization (WHO). For more information on A-SBI, please the CDC vital signs website: www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/alcohol-screening-counseling/index.html

More Resources

The New Mexico Department of Health Substance Abuse Epidemiology Section has New Mexico-specific reports, resources and publications, available at: nmhealth.org/about/erd/ibeb/sap. CDC Alcohol Program has fact sheets, online tool kits, data and recently published literature, available at: www.cdc.gov/alcohol. The CDC also publishes the Prevention Status Reports (PSR), which highlight, for all 50 states and the District of Columbia, the status of public health policies and practices designed to address important public health problems and concerns. The 2013 PSR for excessive alcohol use can be found at: www.cdc.gov/psr/alcohol. The Community Preventive Services Task Force reviews research and makes recommendations to help communities answer the question "what works?" Community Guide recommendations for preventing excessive alcohol consumption can be found at: [http://www.thecommunityguide.org/alcohol].

Indicator Data Last Updated On 03/24/2021, Published on 04/08/2022
Substance Use Epidemiology, Epidemiology and Response Division, New Mexico Department of Health, 1190 S. Saint Francis Drive, Room N-1103, Santa Fe, NM, 87502. Contact Annaliese Mayette, Alcohol Epidemiologist, by telephone at (505) 476-1788 or email to Annaliese.Mayette@state.nm.us.