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Alcohol-attributable burden of disease and injury in Canada, 2004

  • Original Article
  • Published:
International Journal of Public Health

Abstract

Objective

This analysis aimed to estimate the burden of disease and injury caused and prevented by alcohol in 2004 for Canadians aged 0–69 years and compare the effects of different magnitudes of adjustment of survey data on these estimates.

Methods

Alcohol indicators were obtained from the Canadian Alcohol and Drug Use Monitoring Survey 2008 and were corrected to 80% coverage using adult per capita recorded and unrecorded consumption. Risk relations were taken from meta-analyses. Estimates of burden of disease and injury were obtained from the World Health Organization.

Results

In 2004, 4,721 (95% CI 1,432–8,150) deaths and 274,663 (95% CI 201,397–352,432) disability-adjusted life years lost (DALYs) of Canadians 0–69 years of age were attributable to alcohol. This represented 7.1% (95% CI 2.1–12.2%) of all deaths and 9.3% (95% CI 6.8–11.9%) of DALYs for this age range. The sensitivity analysis showed that the outcome estimates varied substantially based on the adjusted coverage rate.

Conclusion

More attention to burden of disease and injury statistics is required to accurately characterize alcohol-related harms. This burden is preventable and could be reduced by implementation of more effective policies.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare they have no competing interests.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, 33 Russell Street, Toronto, ON, M5S 2S1, Canada

    Kevin D. Shield, Tara Kehoe, Ben Taylor, Jayadeep Patra & Jürgen Rehm

  2. Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

    Kevin D. Shield, Ben Taylor & Jürgen Rehm

  3. Department of Statistics, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

    Tara Kehoe

  4. Institute for Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany

    Jürgen Rehm

Authors
  1. Kevin D. Shield
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  2. Tara Kehoe
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  3. Ben Taylor
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  4. Jayadeep Patra
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  5. Jürgen Rehm
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kevin D. Shield.

Appendix

Appendix

See Table 6.

Table 6 Categories of alcohol-related disease and sources used for determining alcohol-attributable fractions
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Shield, K.D., Kehoe, T., Taylor, B. et al. Alcohol-attributable burden of disease and injury in Canada, 2004. Int J Public Health 57, 391–401 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00038-011-0247-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00038-011-0247-7

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