The effects of regional characteristics on alcohol-related mortality—a register-based multilevel analysis of 1.1 million men

Socioeconomic factors, ethnicity and alcohol-related mortality in regions in Slovakia. What might a tree analysis add to our understanding?

“…Most of the published studies dealing with spatial analysis of alcohol-related mortality refer to the significant relationship between regional socioeconomic indicators and alcohol-related mortality rates for both sexes in middle age, higher for men than for women, as in our study (Blomgren et al, 2004;Hemstrom, 2002;Mackenbach et al, 2007;Makela, 1999;Mustard and Etches, 2003;Rehm et al, 2007;Van Oyen et al, 2007;Zatonski et al, 2008). We included only people aged 20-64 in our analyses.…”

“…In the Slovak Republic is regional distribution of income associated mainly with regional disparities connected with economic strength of the regions, where the most developed regions are characterised by the highest income level. Compared with other socioeconomic indicators, regional income is very much prone to reverse causality, whereas regional disparities in education, when education is measured in terms of ''highest education achieved'', does not often change in adulthood and is therefore relatively immune to this effect (Blomgren et al, 2004;Harrison and Gardiner, 1999;Hemstrom, 2002;Herttua et al, 2007;Huisman et al, 2005;Mackenbach et al, 1999Mackenbach et al, , 2007Makela, 1999;Schnohr et al, 2004).…”

“…It has been estimated that alcohol contributes more than 3% to global mortality (Blomgren et al, 2004;Herttua et al, 2007;Mohapatra et al, 2010;Rehm et al, 2007). Alcohol has been part of the European culture for centuries, and Central and Eastern Europe are not different in this respect.…”

Geographic Ancestry and Cause-specific Mortality in a National Population

“…Swedish speakers born in the Helsinki area have almost five times as high alcohol-related mortality as those born in the Coastal area. Separating these two groups implies that the overall variation in alcohol-related mortality is larger than the Swedish-Finnish differential found by previous research (Blomgren et al 2004). Thus it appears quite clear that mortality within the Helsinki area in particular is interrelated with environmental factors outside the scope of this paper (cf.…”

“…With regard to alcohol consumption, it has been argued that Finnish speakers have less healthy drinking habits than Swedish speakers (Simpura 1990), which also is supported by findings which say that Finnishspeaking men in working ages have twice higher risk of alcohol-related mortality than Swedish-speaking men (Blomgren et al 2004). However, there is no exhaustive study that explicitly compares the two groups with regard to risk factors for health.…”