TY - JOUR
PY - 2022//
TI - Associations between the physical availability of alcohol and alcohol use: regional variation across 15 major cities in Ontario, Canada
JO - Journal of studies on alcohol and drugs
A1 - Friesen, Erik Loewen
A1 - Kurdyak, Paul
A1 - Jewett, Rae
A1 - Smith, Brendan Tyler
A1 - Hobin, Erin
A1 - Tanuseputro, Peter
A1 - Myran, Daniel Thomas
SP - 839
EP - 848
VL - 83
IS - 6
N2 - OBJECTIVE: Rates of alcohol use and alcohol-related harms increase with greater alcohol availability. However, regional differences in sociodemographic characteristics and built environment may affect this association. This study evaluated the association between off-premise alcohol availability and alcohol use in Ontario, Canada, and the degree to which this association varies between cities.
METHOD: This was a cross-sectional spatial analysis of urban neighborhoods in Ontario, Canada (n = 11,742). The primary exposure was off-premise alcohol availability, based on the drive time from a neighborhood to the closest off-premise outlets. The primary outcome was the neighborhood-level prevalence of high-volume alcohol use (>2 drinks/day [males], >1 drink/ day [females]) based on survey data from 2000 to 2014. The association between availability and use was assessed using Bayesian hierarchical spatial models to account for spatial autocorrelation.
RESULTS: There was an overall positive association between alcohol availability and high-volume alcohol use (male coefficient estimate (β) = 0.19, 95% credible interval [CI] [0.16, 0.22]; female β = 0.17, 95% CI [0.13, 0.21]). However, the association was eliminated in models that allowed for this association to vary between cities via an interaction term (male β = -0.04, 95% CI [-0.26, 0.19]; female β = -0.04, 95% CI [-0.34, 0.26]). This was explained by variability in the association between cities, where some cities demonstrated a positive association between availability and use and others demonstrated a negative association.
CONCLUSIONS: Although there is a province-wide positive association between off-premise alcohol availability and high-volume alcohol use, there is substantial regional variation in this association that may affect the local effectiveness of alcohol regulation policies.
Language: en
LA - en SN - 1937-1888 UR - http://dx.doi.org/ ID - ref1 ER -