New Local Alcohol Profiles for England published

This week, Public Health England have released their updated Local Alcohol Profiles for England. Based on hospital admissions and mortality data, they provide the best available indicator of how alcohol-related health harms are distributed across English regions. At a national level, the new figures show a 3% fall in alcohol-specific deaths in the period 2012-4 compared to the previous three years. They also show a 7% fall in chronic liver disease since 2006, although there has been little change in the last three years. However, the data also shows a 1% rise in alcohol-related deaths over the same period. Alcohol-specific deaths are those recorded as due to a condition, such as alcoholic liver disease, which is always caused by drinking. Alcohol-related deaths are conditions, such as certain cancers, for which alcohol may play a contributory role. The figure for these is an estimate based on ‘alcohol attributable fractions’ that are allocated to any death from a cause that may be associated with drinking. The full methodology is available in the LAPE User Guide. The calculation for alcohol-related deaths used by PHE differs from that used by the Office for National Statistics, and produces a much higher figure.  There is a detailed discussion of this in the most recent ONS report on alcohol mortality. Both figures, however, show a fall in alcohol-specific mortality in recent years. The fall in alcohol-specific deaths suggests a decline in the number of people dying as...
Source: Alcohol Research UK - Category: Addiction Authors: Tags: News Source Type: news