Alcohol-related Injury Deaths by County, New Mexico, 2015-2019

Why Is This Important?

Binge drinking (defined as having five drinks or more on an occasion for men, and four drinks or more on an occasion for women) is a high-risk behavior associated with numerous injury outcomes, including motor vehicle fatalities, homicide, and suicide. Since 1990, New Mexico's death rate for alcohol-related (AR) injury has consistently been among the highest in the nation, ranging from 1.4 to 1.8 times the national rate. While NM's alcohol-impaired motor vehicle crash fatality rates have declined almost 60% during this period, death rates from other AR injuries have increased. Data show a substantial increase in AR fall injury and AR poisoning death rates since the early 90s; the AR fall death rate peaked in 2007-09 and has declined since, while AR poisoning has continued to rise. These increases have more than offset the decline in AR motor vehicle crash deaths, as well as a slight increase in AR suicide death rate, to drive an overall 29% increase in New Mexico's AR injury death during the period 1990-2015. During the period 2008-2015, AR poisoning deaths replaced AR motor vehicle crash deaths as the leading cause of alcohol-related injury death in New Mexico.

Definition

Alcohol-related injury death is defined as the number of injury deaths attributed to alcohol per 100,000 population. 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).

Data Notes

Data Sources

• New Mexico Death Data: Bureau of Vital Records and Health Statistics (BVRHS), Epidemiology and Response Division, New Mexico Department of Health.
  (https://www.nmhealth.org/about/erd/bvrhs/vrp/)
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics.
  (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/)
• New Mexico Population Estimates: University of New Mexico, Geospatial and Population Studies (GPS) Program.
  (http://gps.unm.edu/)

How the Measure is Calculated

Data Issues

• Death Certificate Data

  Death certificate information is submitted electronically by funeral directors, who obtain demographic information from an informant, a close family member of the decedent. The NMDOH Bureau of Vital Records and Health Statistics (BVRHS) does annual trainings for funeral directors and local registrars and the death certificate information goes through extensive scrutiny for completeness and consistency. The cause of death is certified by the decedent's physician or the physician that attended the death. Accidental and suspicious deaths are certified by the Office of the Medical Investigator. When death certificates are received the cause of death literals are keyed into software locally by the BVRHS, then shipped to the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) where they are machine coded into ICD-10 cause-of-death codes. NCHS returns the ICD-10 codes to BVRHS where the death records are updated.

• New Mexico Population Estimates

  All population estimates apply to July 1 of the selected year. These estimates are considered the most accurate estimates for the state of New Mexico and should match those found on the University of New Mexico Geospatial and Population Studies website. Estimates include decimal fractions. Census tract population estimates were summed to produce County and Small Area population estimates. Population estimate totals may vary due to rounding. Population estimates for previous years are occasionally revised as new information becomes available. When publishing trend data, always be sure that your rates for earlier years match current rates on NM-IBIS that have been calculated with the most up-to-date population estimates.

Health Topic Pages Related to: Alcohol - Alcohol-related Injury Deaths

• Alcohol Use
• Injury Prevention
• Injury and Violence
• Leading Causes of Death
• Mental Health
• Substance Use