Notice to Readers: Forthcoming Correction and Republication of the Report “Deaths and Years of Potential Life Lost From Excessive Alcohol Use — United States, 2011–2015”

Recently, the authors of the report “Deaths and Years of Potential Life Lost From Excessive Alcohol Use — United States, 2011–2015” (1) informed MMWR Editors that some results were inaccurate as a result of a data input error that occurred during an update to the online Alcohol-Related Disease Impact application (2), which was used in the study. This error resulted in an overall underestimate of average annual alcohol-attributable deaths by 1,862 and years of potential life lost by 79,844 for the United States during 2011–2015. On September 3, 2020, corrections were made in the online Alcohol-Related Disease Impact application to the alcohol-attributable fractions for five acute causes of death: drownings, fall injuries, fire injuries, firearm injuries, and homicide. The updated national and state estimates are now available in the Alcohol-Related Disease Impact application (2). The authors conducted a reanalysis and verification of the data, and a revised report will be published in the coming weeks.

References

1. Esser MB, Sherk A, Liu Y, et al. Deaths and years of potential life lost from excessive alcohol use—United States, 2011–2015. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2020;69:981–7. CrossRef PubMed
2. CDC. Alcohol-related disease impact application. Atlanta, GA: US Department of Health and Human Services, CDC; 2020. https://www.cdc.gov/ardi