Indicator Report - Alcohol-Related Injury Death Rates by County, New Mexico 2007-2009, and United States, 2005-2007
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.
Alcohol-Related Injury Death Rates by County, New Mexico 2007-2009, and United States, 2005-2007
The counties are shaded according to whether the county rate is lower, higher, or the same as the New Mexico statewide overall rate. A county rate is considered statistically higher than the state overall if the lower limit of the county rate 95% confidence interval was higher than the state rate. A county rate is considered statistically lower than the state overall if the upper limit of the county rate 95% confidence interval was lower than the state rate.
Data Notes
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/.Other Views
Definition
Alcohol-related injury death is defined as the number of injury deaths attributed to alcohol per 100,000 population.How We Calculated the Rates
| Numerator: | The total number of alcohol-related injury deaths per year. |
| Denominator: | The estimated mid-year population for annual rates. |
Page Content Updated On 12/22/2010,
Published on 06/23/2011
