Abstract
BackgroundAlcohol related homicide, suicide and aggravated assault represent the largest costs for the state of Illinois. Previous research has examined the impact of some alcohol-related policies on youth alcohol use and alcohol-related harm in the United States but findings have been mixed. To our knowledge, no study has provided a detailed epidemiology of the relationship between the impacts of alcohol policies on unintentional injury in Illinois. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to determine whether a legislation that prohibit minors under 21 years old in establishments that serve alcohol is more salient than individual level factors in predicting hospitalization for traumatic unintentional injuries.MethodsA retrospective observational study of data abstracted from 6,139 patients aged 10 to 19 hospitalized in Illinois Level I and Level II trauma centers. Patient data from 2006 to 2015 was linked with the city-level alcohol-related legislation (n = 514 cities). The response variable was whether a patient tested positive or negative for blood alcohol concentration (BAC) at the time of admission. Mixed-effects logistic regression analyses were conducted to model the patient and city level legislation effect of having a positive BAC test result on hospitalizations after adjusting for the legislation and patient factors.ResultsAfter adjustment, patients aged 15 to 19 and white patients who tested positive for BAC at the time of admission had the greater odds of hospitalization for traumatic alcohol-related unintentional injuries compared to patients who had a negative BAC test result. However, odds of hospitalization decreased for female patients and for those with private insurance, and over time, but a significant decrease in such hospitalizations occurred during 2010, 2014 and 2015. The alcohol-related legislation of interest was not a significant predictor of traumatic alcohol-related unintentional injury hospitalization.ConclusionsPatient-level covariates were significant predictors of traumatic alcohol-related unintentional injury hospitalization; an alcohol-related legislation may not reduce hospitalizations for young patients aged 10 to 19. Therefore, to prevent underage drinking and consequences, interventions should target sex/gender, race/ethnicity and focus on both individual and environmental strategies.
Highlights
Alcohol related homicide, suicide and aggravated assault represent the largest costs for the state of Illinois
Because we sought to determine whether a legislation that prohibit minors under 21 years old in establishments that serve alcohol is more salient than individual level factors in predicting traumatic unintentional injury hospitalization, we obtained city-level survey data of local liquor control authorities from the Illinois Liquor Control Commission (ILCC) conducted in 2013
This study shows that both alcohol-related legislation and patient-level factors can contribute either positively or negatively to traumatic unintentional injury hospitalizations among young people
Summary
Suicide and aggravated assault represent the largest costs for the state of Illinois. The mortality rate for this age group was high among trauma young patients who tested positive for alcohol at the time of hospitalization [7] Despite this fact and to the best of our knowledge, the link between young persons’ alcohol-related hospitalization and alcohol legislation has not been previously been investigated in Illinois. There is a growing body of literature that recognizes the impact of some alcohol-related policies, youth alcohol use, and alcohol-related harm [14,15,16], much of the research up to now has primarily focused on alcohol outlet density and alcohol-related motor-vehicle crashes [9, 17,18,19] In most of these studies “single vehicle nighttime crashes are widely used to indicate motor-vehicle crashes due to drinking and driving” [8]. We know little about the current prevalence of traumatic alcohol-related unintentional injuries among young people, and/or how these outcomes have changed over time
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