Abstract
Alcohol has been ranked as Aotearoa New Zealand’s most harmful drug, not only in terms of harm to the people who consume it, but also the harm to others [1]. Alcohol consumption is a substantial contributor to health and social harms, and is a leading cause of both morbidity and mortality for Aotearoa New Zealand [2, 3]. Māori are more likely than other groups in the population to have hazardous drinking patterns [4], and harms from alcohol are disproportionately experienced among Māori [5]. While alcohol use is a known problem, there is a lack of current, comprehensive quantifications of the harm from alcohol [6].
Alcohol research has underutilised Aotearoa New Zealand’s world-class data available through the Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI). The aims of our research were to describe sources of information on alcohol related harm available within the IDI, and to trial a method for integrating data from these sources to create a summary measure of alcohol related harm in Aotearoa New Zealand. Our report describes the data linkage algorithms we developed to create two summary measures of alcohol related harm. Potential sources of bias, recommendations for the use of the algorithms, and possible future improvements are discussed.
References
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