The broad objectives of this proposal are to better understand the relationship between usual drinking behavior and the incidence of various types of fatal injuries among different age, gender, and race/ethnic groups, and to use this to prevent further fatalities.
The specific aims of this proposal are: 1) To compare specific types of fatal injuries with regard to their association with usual drinking behavior and to determine the effect of usual drinking .behavior on various types of fatal injuries. 2) To examine the association of usual drinking behavior with the risk of various types of fatal injuries by age, gender, and race/ethnic groups. 3) To disseminate the results to both scientific and public communities and to make relevant policy recommendations. Injuries are the third leading cause of death, claiming more than 145,000 lives each year in the United States. Although acute alcohol consumption is an established risk factor for fatal injuries, little is known of the relationship between usual drinking behavior and risk of fatal injury among various types of causes and different age, gender, and race/ethnic groups. Previous research on alcohol and injury either is limited to select population groups, or lacks sufficient sample size. Moreover, no published paper simultaneously explores major specific injury categories in relation to alcohol consumption, based on the general population. The proposed population based case-control project will be based on two nationwide surveys, the 1993 National Mortality Followback Survey (NMFS) and the 1992 National Longitudinal Alcohol Epidemiologic Survey (NLAES). Cases will be deaths in the United States due to various types of injuries; each will be analyzed separately -- they include motor vehicle injuries, unintentional poisoning, unintentional falls, unintentional fire deaths, unintentional drowning, firearm related unintentional injuries, firearm related suicide, other suicide, firearm related homicide, and other homicide Controls will be all respondents in the NLAES and from the same population as NMFS. Stratified analyses will be performed on each individual injury having sufficient number of cases. Age, gender, race/ethnicity, education, employment, occupation, income, marriage status, geographic region, and illicit drug use will be considered in analyses. Weighted analyses will be performed using SUDAAN. The results will provide needed information for evaluating injury related alcohol policies and for developing new intervention programs to effectively improve safety and for designing further studies.
| Chen, Li-Hui; Baker, Susan P; Li, Guohua (2005) Drinking history and risk of fatal injury: comparison among specific injury causes. Accid Anal Prev 37:245-51 |
