Community indicators: Assessing the impact of Alcohol 135 Community indicators Assessing the Impact of Alcohol use on Communities

Community indicators are used to assess the impact of alcohol on communities. this article reviews the main data sources for community indicators, discusses their strengths and limitations, and discusses indicators used in reference to four main topics relating to alcohol use and problems at the community level: alcohol use, patterns, and problems; alcohol availability; alcohol-related health outcomes/trauma; and alcohol-related crime and enforcement. it also reviews the challenges associated with collecting community indicator data, along with important innovations in the field that have contributed to better knowledge of how to collect and analyze community-level data on the impact of alcohol. kEY WoRDS: Alcohol use, abuse, and dependence; alcohol burden; problematic alcohol use; harmful drinking; alcohol-related harm; alcohol use patterns; alcohol effects and consequences; alcohol availability; risk factors; environmental impact; crime; community indicators; community monitoring; community epidemiology; data collection; public policy on alcohol in the United States and other countries around the world,researchers have long been interested in community-levelmeasurement of population health in the form of com-munity indicators. Community indicators are measures that communicate information about a given dimension of a community’s well-being (Besleme and Mullin 1997). In the United States, the current popularity of community indicators can be traced back to the social-indicators movement of th