Alcohol - Alcohol-related Injury Deaths

Why Is This Important?

Binge drinking (defined as having five drinks or more on an occasion for men, and four drinks or more on an occasion for women) is a high-risk behavior associated with numerous injury outcomes, including motor vehicle fatalities, homicide, and suicide. Since 1990, New Mexico's death rate for alcohol-related (AR) injury has consistently been among the highest in the nation, ranging from 1.4 to 1.8 times the national rate. While NM's alcohol-impaired motor vehicle crash fatality rates have declined almost 60% during this period, death rates from other AR injuries have increased. Data show a substantial increase in AR fall injury and AR poisoning death rates since the early 90s; the AR fall death rate peaked in 2007-09 and has declined since, while AR poisoning has continued to rise. These increases have more than offset the decline in AR motor vehicle crash deaths, as well as a slight increase in AR suicide death rate, to drive an overall 29% increase in New Mexico's AR injury death during the period 1990-2015. During the period 2008-2015, AR poisoning deaths replaced AR motor vehicle crash deaths as the leading cause of alcohol-related injury death in New Mexico.

Definition

Alcohol-related injury death is defined as the number of injury deaths attributed to alcohol per 100,000 population. The alcohol-related 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

• New Mexico Death Data: Bureau of Vital Records and Health Statistics (BVRHS), Epidemiology and Response Division, New Mexico Department of Health.
  (https://www.nmhealth.org/about/erd/bvrhs/vrp/)
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics.
  (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/)
• New Mexico Population Estimates: University of New Mexico, Geospatial and Population Studies (GPS) Program.
  (http://gps.unm.edu/)

How the Measure is Calculated

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: www.thecommunityguide.org/alcohol.