ArticleDrug and alcohol dependence2021
Sociodemographic changes in emergency department visits due to alcohol during COVID-19.
Article in Drug and alcohol dependence, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 31 citations in OpenAlex.
- Pooled it
- COVID-19 in Rural Ontario Communities: Exploring Women's Mental Health During a Pandemic.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2025Article
- Changes in population-level alcohol sales after non-medical cannabis legalisation in Canada.Drug and alcohol review · 2025Observational
- "Whatever journey you want to take, I'll support you through": a mixed methods evaluation of a peer worker program in the hospital emergency department.BMC health services research · 2024Article
- Outcomes in Clinical Subgroups of Patients With Alcohol-Related Hospitalizations.JAMA network open · 2024Article
- Changes in health service use due to alcohol during the COVID-19 pandemic among individuals with and individuals without pre-existing alcohol-related medical diagnoses.Canadian journal of public health = Revue canadienne de sante publique · 2023Article
- Mental Health Conditions- and Substance Use-Associated Emergency Department Visits during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Nevada, USA.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2023Article
- Investigating the early impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on modifiable risk factors for cancer and chronic disease: a repeated cross-sectional study in Alberta, Canada.Canadian journal of public health = Revue canadienne de sante publique · 2022Article
- Lockdown and licensed premises: COVID-19 lessons for alcohol policy.Drug and alcohol review · 2022Article
- Changes in the dollar value of per capita alcohol, essential, and non-essential retail sales in Canada during COVID-19.BMC public health · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
introductionLittle detailed sociodemographic information is available about how alcohol use and associated health care visits have changed during COVID-19. Therefore, we assessed how rates of emergency department (ED) visits due to alcohol have changed during COVID-19 by age and sex and for individuals living in urban and rural settings and low and high-income neighborhoods.
methodsOur cohort included 13,660,516 unique Ontario residents between the ages of 10-105. We compared rates and characteristics of ED visits due to alcohol, identified using ICD-10 codes, from March 11-August 31 2020 to the same period in the prior 3 years. We used negative binomial regressions to examine to examine changes is visits during COVID-19 after accounting for temporal and seasonal trends.
resultsDuring COVID-19, the average monthly rate of ED visits due to alcohol decreased by 17.2 % (95 % CI -22.7, -11.3) from 50.5-40.9 visits per 100,000 individuals. In contrast, the proportion of all-cause ED visits due to alcohol increased by 11.4 % (95 % CI 7.7, 15.3) from 15.0 visits to 16.3 visits per 1000 all cause ED visits. Changes in ED visits due to alcohol were similar for men in women. Decreases in visits were larger for younger adults compared to older adults and pre-COVID-19 disparities in rates of ED visits due to alcohol between urban and rural settings and low and high-income neighborhoods widened. ED visits related to harms from acute intoxication showed the largest declines during COVID-19, particularly in younger adults and urban and high-income neighborhoods.
conclusionED visits due to alcohol decreased during the first six months of COVID-19, but to a lesser extent than decreases in all-cause ED visits. Our data suggest a widening of geographic and income-based disparities in alcohol harms in Ontario during COVID-19 which may require immediate and long-term interventions to mitigate.
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