TY - JOUR PY - 2019// TI - Using Rural⁻Urban Continuum Codes (RUCCS) to examine alcohol-related motor vehicle crash injury and enforcement in New York State JO - International journal of environmental research and public health A1 - Pressley, Joyce C. A1 - Hines, Leah M. A1 - Bauer, Michael J. A1 - Oh, Shin Ah A1 - Kuhl, Joshua R. A1 - Liu, Chang A1 - Cheng, Bin A1 - Garnett, Matthew F. SP - e16081346 EP - e16081346 VL - 16 IS - 8 N2 - Rural areas of New York State (NYS) have higher rates of alcohol-related motor vehicle (MV) crash injury than metropolitan areas. While alcohol-related injury has declined across the three geographic regions of NYS, disparities persist with rural areas having smaller declines. Our study aim was to examine factors associated with alcohol-related MV crashes in Upstate and Long Island using multi-sourced county-level data that included the Crash Outcome Data Evaluation System (CODES) with emergency department visits and hospitalizations, traffic citations, demographic, economic, transportation, alcohol outlets, and Rural-Urban Continuum Codes (RUCCS). A cross-sectional study design employed zero-truncated negative binominal regression models to assess relative risks (RR) with 95% confidence interval (CI). Counties (n = 57, 56,000 alcohol-related crashes over the 3 year study timeframe) were categorized by mean annual alcohol-related MV injuries per 100,000 population: low (24.7 ± 3.9), medium (33.9 ± 1.7) and high (46.1 ± 8.0) (p < 0.0001). In multivariable analyses, alcohol-related MV injury was elevated for non-adjacent, non-metropolitan counties (RR 2.5, 95% CI: 1.6-3.9) with higher citations for impaired driving showing a small, but significant protective effect. Less metropolitan areas had higher alcohol-related MV injury with inconsistent alcohol-related enforcement measures. In summary, higher alcohol-related MV injury rates in non-metropolitan counties demonstrated a dose-response relationship with proximity to a metropolitan area. These findings suggest areas where intervention efforts might be targeted to lower alcohol-related MV injury.

Language: en

LA - en SN - 1661-7827 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16081346 ID - ref1 ER -