Impact of alcohol control policy on injury occurrence: A cross-national comparison among Korea, China and Taiwan

The objective of this presentation is to characterize the relations between alcohol-related injuries and alcohol policies in three Asian Countries.

We conducted a cross-national comparison in alcohol use patterns of injured patients and took into consideration of country-level contextual variables to address the differences of alcohol use patterns and country-level alcohol policies among three Asian Countries.

We observed significant country differentials with regard to admitting time at the emergency department (ED). Significantly greater percentage of the Korean ED patients sought treatment from 11 pm to 4 am, while in China there was a  higher percentage of injured patients entering ED from 2 pm to 11 pm than any other times. Surprisingly, Taiwanese ED patients sought medical attention evenly throughout the day. We speculated that differences in closing time of the bars might partially account for these differences.

One of the major findings of this study was that for all three countries, a high proportion of ED patients sustained injuries at a public place, while injury occurrence  at licensed places was relatively low. Furthermore,  an elevated rate of the ED patients were injured at the work place: Chinese at 29.6%, Taiwanese at 16.1%, and Korean at 11.9%, respectively. A plausible explanation of these phenomena might be  lack of off-premise sales restrictions and enforcement.

Although all three countries have similar drinking cultures, the observed disparities with respect to alcohol use patterns and related injuries may be attributed to the differences in alcohol control policies, especially the policy on physical availability of alcohol.