Preventing AlcoholRelated Problems Through Health

Alcoholrelated health policy research is responsible for guiding the implementation of laws and public health policies that have reduced alcoholrelated highway injuries and deaths, as well as other alcoholrelated problems over the last 40 years. This research, which tests theories about potential policy changes and responds to specific problems, has examined a vast array of prevention programs. This article briefly identifies 10 program categories and highlights four programs to illustrate the scope and complexity of the individual health policy areas within the categories. KEY WORDS: Problematic alcohol and other drug (AOD) use; AOD misuse; policy; public health policies; laws; regulations; environmentallevel prevention; prevention through policy change The founding in 1970 of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) coincided with a large increase in Federal research funds for studies of alcohol policies related to highway deaths and injuries, as well as injuries flowing from alcoholrelated crime and health problems resulting from heavy alcohol consump tion. Alcoholrelated highway fatalities were at an alltime high in 1970, and there were an estimated 100,000 alcohol attributable deaths in the United States (Modad et al. 2004; NIAAA 1997). In the 40 years since the founding of NIAAA, those losses have been sub stantially reduced through the imple mentation of laws and public health policies growing out of research that has been summarized in Alcohol Researc