Abstract:
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Greater outlet density is associated with increased alcohol consumption and related harms. Properly quantifying geographic access to alcohol is important in evaluating its public health impact. This study is designed to assess the association between two sets of spatial accessibility quantifiers to on-premise alcohol outlets and alcohol consumption measured from a population-based survey. Lu et al. (2018) created population-weighted spatial accessibility indices and population-weighted distances (Euclidean distance, driving distance, and driving time) to alcohol outlets at the census tract, county, and state levels using 2013 Homeland Security Infrastructure Program (HSIP) GOLD 2013 dataset. We associated these two sets of geographic access measures at state-level with prevalence of current alcohol consumption and binge drinking from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey 2016 data. The multilevel regression was conducted controlling for individual characteristics. The spatial accessibility indices appear to be more sensitively related to alcohol consumption than the measure of distances. Further analysis can be conducted with smaller geographic units.
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