Alcohol's harm to others: Multinational cultural contexts and policy implications

This US National Institutes of Health-funded project will be the first to assess the types, severity, and individual and contextual correlates of harms from others’ heavy drinking in a wide range of societies with greatly varying drinking cultures and policies. Studying alcohol’s harms to others in a multinational, public health framework parallels the role that data on second-hand smoking harms played in making the case for tobacco regulations. The study will apply new metrics, including reduced quality of life and other costs, to document the severity of second-hand impacts of alcohol. By studying comprehensively how individual, social, and economic influences, as well as national alcohol policies, may affect heavy drinkers’ harms to families, friends, and strangers, the research will inform prevention planning and generate data to help gauge alcohol policy effects on these harms in varying cultural contexts.