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Under-Researched Demographics: Heavy Episodic Drinking and Alcohol-Related Problems Among Asian Americans

Electronic Feedback in College Student Drinking Prevention and Intervention

Alcohol consumption is prevalent among college students and can be associated with serious negative consequences. Several efficacious programs using one-on-one brief intervention techniques have been developed to target high-risk drinking by individual students, such as the Brief Alcohol Screening and Intervention for College Students (BASICS) (Dimeff et al. 1999). To reach a larger population (e...

Adolescent Binge Drinking

Binge drinking, commonly defined as consuming five or more standard drinks per occasion for men and four or more drinks for women, typically begins in adolescence. Adolescents, although they may drink less often, tend to consume higher quantities of alcohol per occasion compared with adults. This developmental difference in pattern of alcohol consumption may result, in part, from maturational...

Gender Differences in Binge Drinking

A large research literature shows that women consistently consume less alcohol than men, and they experience fewer social problems resulting from drinking than men, but these gender differences vary culturally, demographically, and historically.

Uniting Epidemiology and Experimental Disease Models for Alcohol-Related Pancreatic Disease

Findings from epidemiologic studies and research with experimental animal models provide insights into alcohol-related disease pathogeneses. Epidemiologic data indicate that heavy drinking and smoking are associated with high rates of pancreatic disease. Less clear is the association between lower levels of drinking and pancreatitis. Intriguingly, a very low percentage of drinkers develop clinical...

Focus On: The Burden of Alcohol Use—Trauma and Emergency Outcomes

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 and the Adolescent Brain: What We’ve Learned and Where the Data Are Taking Us

Introduction

The past 50 years of research supported by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) have resulted in an accumulation of invaluable data to address the multifaceted problems surrounding underage drinking. Youth use of alcohol remains a pervasive social and public health concern in the United States and a leading cause of disability and mortality during...

Associations Between Socioeconomic Factors and Alcohol Outcomes

According to the World Health Organization (2014), alcohol consumption is responsible for approximately 5.9 percent of deaths worldwide and a global loss of 139 million disability-adjusted life-years. The alcohol-related disease burden is precipitated in part by acute intoxication, which decreases reaction time, perception and motor skills, and inhibitions and is thereby associated with an...

High-Intensity Drinking

Binge drinking thresholds have long been set at four or more drinks for women and five or more drinks for men over the course of a few hours. However, a significant number of people regularly consume much higher amounts of alcohol: double or even triple the standard binge drinking threshold. Researchers have begun to distinguish between typical binge drinking and this kind of “high-intensity...

Using Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) to Assess Situation-Level Predictors of Alcohol Use and Alcohol-Related Consequences

Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) has afforded several important advances in the field of alcohol research, including testing prominent models of alcohol abuse etiology in “high resolution.” Using high-tech methods for signaling and/or assessment, such as mobile electronic diaries, personal data assistants, and smartphones, EMA approaches potentially can improve understanding of precipitants...