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Translating Alcohol Research Into Practice - Editor's Note

Translational research helps move basic science and clinical laboratory discoveries toward application in health and medicine. Through controlled experiments, basic scientists use animal models to reproduce disease characteristics caused by an agent—in this case, excessively high exposure to alcohol. Through systematic study and observation, clinical research scientists identify symptomatic and...

Maternal Substance Use: Consequences, Identification, and Interventions

Alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis are the substances most frequently used during pregnancy, and opioid-exposed pregnancies have increased fourfold. The purpose of this review is to describe the prevalence and consequences of prenatal exposure to alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, and opioids. Currently available screening questionnaires for prenatal substance use are summarized and contrasted with the...

Recovery-Oriented Systems of Care: A Perspective on the Past, Present, and Future

Introduction

This perspective focuses on the relatively recent topic of recovery-oriented systems of care; although influential in practice, this concept has yet to be evaluated empirically and thus cannot yet be the object of a review. In lieu of such evidence, this article offers one perspective on the origins of this concept and its present status prior to considering possible directions in...

Influence of Social Media on Alcohol Use in Adolescents and Young Adults

Participation in online social media Web sites (e.g., Facebook and Twitter) has skyrocketed in recent years and created a new environment in which adolescents and young adults may be exposed to and influenced by alcohol-related content. Thus, young people are exposed to and display pro-alcohol messages and images through online portrayals of drinking on personal pages as well as unregulated...

Measuring the Burden - Editor's Note

Alcohol use is associated with tremendous costs to the drinker, those around him or her, and society as a whole. These costs result from the increased health risks (both physical and mental) associated with alcohol consumption as well as from the social harms caused by alcohol. This issue of Alcohol Research: Current Reviews examines the public health impact of alcohol consumption, looking at the...

Alcohol Use and Related Problems Along the United States–Mexico Border

Measuring the Burden - Alcohol’s Evolving Impact

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...

Reducing Prenatal Alcohol Exposure and the Incidence of FASD: Is the Past Prologue?

Introduction

Prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) is linked to miscarriage, stillbirth, preterm birth, sudden infant death syndrome, and fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD).1 Although PAE is the sole necessary cause of FASD, the etiology of this leading preventable cause of disability is multifaceted and complex, including lifestyle, maternal, sociodemographic, social, gestational, and genetic...

Are Cisgender Women and Transgender and Nonbinary People Drinking More During the COVID-19 Pandemic? It Depends.

Introduction

Although historically cisgender women (i.e., women whose sex assigned at birth is consonant with their gender) in the United States have had lower levels of alcohol consumption than cisgender men, recent analyses of historical and cohort data suggest that overall gender differences are narrowing.1 This narrowing is largely due to substantial increases in cisgender women's alcohol use...

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