Back to Annual Meeting

Back to Annual Meeting

APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

William C. Kerr, PhD¹, Thomas Greenfield, PhD², and Yu Ye, MA². (1) Alcohol Research Group, Bay Center Bldg C, Suite 400, 6475 Christie Ave, Emeryville, CA 94608, 510 642-5208, wkerr@arg.org, (2) Alcohol Research Group, Public Health Institute, Bay Center Bldg C, Suite 400, 6475 Christie Ave, Emeryville, CA 94608

The relationship between alcohol consumption and health outcomes is complex with past findings of both positive and negative effects and few studies with high quality measures of both current and retrospective drinking patterns. The 2005 National Alcohol Survey (abstract based on preliminary n=5,367) includes a number of heath outcomes such as lifetime incidence of physician-identified heart problems, diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol and self-reported injury. Alcohol measures identify lifetime abstainers and former drinkers along with detailed pattern and beverage-specific past year drinking measures. In addition, retrospective questions on age of onset, most drinks ever consumed in one day and the frequency of 5+ days in the teens, 20's and 30's add important detail to the characterization of lifetime drinking. A number of important confounders are also measured including BMI, education, income, ethnicity, smoking status and illegal drug use. Logistic regression models of specific health conditions will be used to simultaneously estimate the effects of current and retrospective alcohol intake patterns controlling for available relevant confounders. Preliminary results indicate a positive significant relationship between weekly 5+ drinking in the 20's and incidence of heart problems (p<0.05) and injury (p<0.01) and a positive (p<0.01) effect of having 12 or more drinks in a day and injury.

Learning Objectives:

• Particpants will learn about the complexity of life-course alcohol measurement and the relationships between current drinking, level and pattern of drinking and past heavy drinking with specific health outcomes.

Keywords: Alcohol Problems, Health Risks

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No