Harding County Health Highlights: Alcohol-Related Injury Death Rates

Alcohol-related Injury Deaths

Harding County Compared to State


*Description of Dashboard Gauge

Description of the Dashboard Gauge

This "dashboard" type graphic is based on the community data on the right. It compares the community value on this indicator to the state overall value.
  • Excellent = The community's value on this indicator is BETTER than the state value, and the difference IS statistically significant.
  • Watch = The community's value is BETTER than state value, but the difference IS NOT statistically significant.
  • Improvement Needed = The community's value on this indicator is WORSE than the state value, but the difference IS NOT statistically significant.
  • Reason for Concern = The community's value on this indicator is WORSE than the state value, and the difference IS statistically significant.

The community value is considered statistically significantly different from the state value if the state value is outside the range of the community's 95% confidence interval. If the community's data or 95% confidence interval information is not available, a blank gauge image will be displayed with the message, "missing information."
NOTE: The labels used on the gauge graphic are meant to describe the community's status in plain language. The placement of the gauge needle is based solely on the statistical difference between the community and state values. When selecting priority health issues to work on, a community should take into account additional factors such as how much improvement could be made, the U.S. value, the statistical stability of the community number, the severity of the health condition, and whether the difference is clinically significant.

Why Is This Important?

Alcohol-related death, injury, and disease are a serious public health problem in the United States and in New Mexico. In the United States, alcohol is the third leading actual cause of death (after tobacco and poor diet/physical inactivity), responsible for more than 75,000 deaths per year.

Excessive alcohol consumption contributes to many different poor health outcomes. Episodic heavy (or binge) drinking (defined as drinking five or more drinks on a single occasion for men and four or more drinks on a single occasion for women) contributes to a variety of alcohol-related injuries, including motor vehicle crashes, poisonings, falls, homicides, and suicides. In the most recent three-year period for which death data is available (2007-2009) the five leading causes of alcohol-related injury death in New Mexico (and the corresponding death rate per 100,000 population) were: falls injuries (7.3 deaths per 100,000); motor vehicle traffic crashes (5.3 deaths per 100,000); non-alcohol poisoning (5.1 deaths per 100,000); suicide (4.2 deaths per 100,000); and homicide (3.4 deaths per 100,000). While alcohol-related motor vehicle traffic crash death rates have declined dramatically in the past 30 years, other alcohol-related injury death rates have remained stable or increased.

How Are We Doing?

Alcohol-related injury death rates declined in the United States during the 1980s and 1990s, but they have been increasing in the 2000s as a result of increasing rates of alcohol-related falls injury and non-alcohol poisoning deaths.

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).

Alcohol-Related Injury Death Rates by County, New Mexico, 2007-2009, and United States, 2005-2007

::chart - missing::

Harding County 29.1
95% Confidence Interval

Description of 95% Confidence Interval

The confidence interval indicates the range of probable true values for the level of risk in the community.

A value of "DNA" (Data Not Available) will appear if the confidence interval was not published with the IBIS indicator data for this measure.

For more information on confidence intervals, visit the New Mexico IBIS confidence interval page at http://ibis.health.state.nm.us/resources/ConfidenceInterval.html.
(0 - 394)
Statistical Stability

Description of Statistical Stability

  • Stable = This count or rate is relatively stable and should provide a good estimate of your community risk.
  • Unstable = This count or rate is statistically unstable (RSE >0.30), and may fluctuate widely due to random variation (chance).
  • Very Unstable = This count or rate is extremely unstable (RSE >0.50). This value should not be used to represent your population risk. You should combine years or otherwise increase the population denominator in this calculation.
  • DNA = Data Not Available. The required community value and/or confidence interval was not available for this measure.

For more information on statistical stability, visit the New Mexico IBIS Reliability and Validity page at http://ibis.health.state.nm.us/resources/ReliabilityValidity.html.
Very Unstable
New Mexico 29
U.S. 16.2

Note

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). Alcohol-related deaths for 1990-1998 were defined by underlying cause of death based on International Classification of Disease version 9 (ICD-9) codes; and alcohol-related deaths for 1999 and later were defined by underlying cause of death based on International Classification of Disease version 10 (ICD-10) codes. The alcohol-related death rates reported here were age-adjusted to the US 2000 standard population.  NOTE: The U.S. rate reported here is for 2005-2007, the most recent comparable period for which U.S. death data is available.

Data Sources

Population Source: Bureau of Business and Economic Research (BBER) Population Estimates, University of New Mexico. http://www.unm.edu/~bber/.   New Mexico Death Data: Bureau of Vital Records and Health Statistics (BVRHS), New Mexico Department of Health.   U.S. Data Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/.  

Measure Description for Alcohol-related Injury Deaths

Definition: Alcohol-related injury death is defined as the number of injury deaths attributed to alcohol per 100,000 population.
Numerator: The total number of alcohol-related injury deaths per year.
Denominator: The estimated mid-year population for annual rates.
Click on this link to jump to the complete indicator profile report for Alcohol-related Injury Deaths (exits this community report).
Date Indicator Content Last Updated: 12/22/2010
Substance Abuse Epidemiology, Epidemiology and Response Division, New Mexico Department of Health, 1190 St. Francis Dr., Room N1309, P.O. Box 26110, Santa Fe, NM, 87502. Contact Jim Roeber, Alcohol Epidemiologist, by telephone at (505) 476-1757 or email to Jim.Roeber@state.nm.us.
The information provided above is from the New Mexico Department of Health's NM-IBIS web site (http://ibis.health.state.nm.us). The information published on this website may be reproduced without permission. Please use the following citation: "Retrieved Fri, 24 May 2013 4:48:27 from New Mexico Department of Health, Indicator-Based Information System for Public Health Web site: http://ibis.health.state.nm.us".

Content updated: Thu, 7 Jun 2012 13:25:00 MDT