The success of health care organizations is increasingly dependent on their capacity to detect and manage risky health behaviors before those behaviors develop into serious medical problems. Leading causes of morbidity and mortality in the United States are behavioral, and are therefore potentially preventable.
Alcohol misuse is one such serious behavioral problem.
Alcohol was the third leading cause of mortality in 1990, accounting for 100,000 deaths in the U.S. 1 Alcohol misuse costs the American economy billions of dollars annually. 2 Detecting alcohol misuse in populations, and then preventing more serious problems from developing, contributes to patient health and to organizational cost-containment. Actual causes of death in the United States. 2 Institute for Healthy Policy Research and The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.