This study used mortality data and associated demographic characteristics for the entire US population, derived from death certificates from the US National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for the years 2000 to 2016, inclusive. Population data were obtained from the US Census Bureau. For this study, we included members of the full cohort of the US population older than 15 years, the age cutoff commonly used by the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in reports on alcohol consumption and health effects.7,8 We restricted analyses of the American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) population to Indian Health Service Purchased and Referred Care Service Delivery Area counties to minimize misclassification within this population.9 As the data were publicly available, institutional review board approval and informed consent were not needed, per the institutional policy of the National Cancer Institute. Reporting of this study followed the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) reporting guideline.
