Alcohol-related Injury Deaths by County, New Mexico, 2019-2023

Why Is This Important?

Acute conditions such as falls, motor vehicle collisions, suicide, homicide, poisonings, and firearm injuries can contribute to alcohol-related deaths. While acute alcohol-related deaths account for less than half of the total alcohol-related deaths in New Mexico they are by no means infrequent. Injury alcohol-related deaths may be due more to binge drinking than heavy drinking. 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 the most frequent, harmful, and costly form of excessive alcohol consumption, and is a high-risk behavior associated with numerous injury outcomes, including motor vehicle fatalities, homicide, and suicide. New Mexico's death rate for alcohol-related injury has consistently been among the highest in the nation. While New Mexico's alcohol-impaired motor vehicle crash fatality rates have declined over the past three decades, death rates from other alcohol-related injuries. All alcohol related-injury deaths are preventable.

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 Notes

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

Data Issues

• Death Certificate Data

  Death certificate information is submitted electronically by funeral directors, who obtain demographic information from an informant, a close family member of the decedent. The NMDOH Bureau of Vital Records and Health Statistics (BVRHS) does annual trainings for funeral directors and local registrars and the death certificate information goes through extensive scrutiny for completeness and consistency. The cause of death is certified by the decedent's physician or the physician that attended the death. Accidental and suspicious deaths are certified by the Office of the Medical Investigator. When death certificates are received the cause of death literals are keyed into software locally by the BVRHS, then shipped to the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) where they are machine coded into ICD-10 cause-of-death codes. NCHS returns the ICD-10 codes to BVRHS where the death records are updated.

• New Mexico Population Estimates

  All population estimates apply to July 1 of the selected year. These estimates are considered the most accurate estimates for the state of New Mexico and should match those found on the University of New Mexico Geospatial and Population Studies website. Estimates include decimal fractions. Census tract population estimates were summed to produce County and Small Area population estimates. Population estimate totals may vary due to rounding. Population estimates for previous years are occasionally revised as new information becomes available. When publishing trend data, always be sure that your rates for earlier years match current rates on NM-IBIS that have been calculated with the most up-to-date population estimates.

Health Topic Pages Related to: Alcohol - Alcohol-related Injury Deaths

• Alcohol Use
• Injury Prevention
• Injury and Violence
• Leading Causes of Death
• Mental Health
• Substance Use