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Research has shown differential social and health effects from alcohol use across U.S. ethnic groups, including Whites, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and Native Americans. The relationship of ethnicity to alcohol-related social and health harms partially is attributed to the different rates and patterns of drinking across ethnicities. Some ethnic groups have higher rates of alcohol consumption...

In the United States, alcohol use typically begins and escalates during adolescence and young adulthood. To describe the historical and developmental trends in substance use in this age group, the Monitoring the Future (MTF) study (Johnston et al. 2012) was designed in 1975. Since then, this ongoing national-cohort sequential longitudinal study assessing the epidemiology and etiology of substance...

Even though the prevalence of alcohol use in the United States generally is lower among women compared with men (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration [SAMHSA] 2011), this gap has narrowed (Grucza et al. 2008). Furthermore, although women consume alcohol at lower levels than men, their body composition puts them at higher risk than men of developing some alcohol-related...

Research is continuing to investigate how alcohol impacts chronic disease. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) hosted a 2-day Expert Panel on Alcohol and Chronic Disease Epidemiology in August 2011 to review the state of the field on alcohol and chronic disease. The panel was chaired by Kenneth J. Mukamal, M.D., and Rosalind A. Breslow, Ph.D., M.P.H., R.D., and was...

Alcohol consumption is a leading risk factor for morbidity and mortality related to both intentional (i.e., violence- related) and unintentional injury. In 2000, 16.2 percent of deaths and 13.2 percent of disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) from injuries, worldwide, were estimated to be attributable to alcohol (Rehm et al. 2009). Alcohol affects psychomotor skills, including reaction time, as...

Alcohol has been a part of human culture for all of recorded history, with almost all societies in which alcohol is consumed experiencing net health and social problems (McGovern 2009; Tramacere et al. 2012b, c). With the industrialization of alcohol production and the globalization of its marketing and promotion, alcohol consumption and its related harms have increased worldwide (see Alcohol...

In the United States and other countries around the world, researchers have long been interested in community-level measurement of population health in the form of community indicators. Community indicators are measures that communicate information about a given dimension of a community’s well-being (Besleme and Mullin 1997). In the United States, the current popularity of community indicators can...

This issue of Alcohol Research: Current Reviews examines the public health impact of alcohol consumption beyond the role of alcohol use disorders alone (Room et al. 2005)—that is, it looks at the burden of disease. Determining impact hinges on accurate and consistent “measurements.” As demonstrated in the articles in this issue, impact typically is estimated based on three elements (Rehm et al...

Alcohol and Mortality

Alcohol is causally linked to more than 200 different diseases, conditions, and injuries (as specified in the International Classification of Diseases, Revision 10 [ICD-10] three-digit codes [see Rehm 2011; Rehm et al. 2009; Shield et al., 2013c [pp. 155–173 of this issue]). All of these disease, condition, and injury categories cause mortality and disability, and, thus...

The burden of alcohol use usually is expressed as a function of the contribution of alcohol use in a population to morbidity and mortality in that population (Rehm et al. 2010). It is difficult to calculate the burden of alcohol use for middle-school and high-school adolescents (see Patrick and Schulembery, p. 193 in this issue) and nearly impossible to do so for children and preadolescents. There...