Alcohol-attributed disease burden and formal alcohol policies in the Nordic countries (1990–2019)

Abstract

It is still unclear how changes in alcohol control policies may have contributed to changes in overall levels of alcohol-attributed harm between and within the Nordic countries. 

We modified and applied the Bridging the Gap (BtG)-scale to measure the restrictiveness of a set of alcohol control policies for each Nordic country and each year between 1990 and 2019. Alcohol-attributed harm was measured as total and sex-specific alcohol-attributed disease burden by age-standardized years of life losts (YLLs), years lived with disability (YLDs), and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) per 100 000 population from the Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD). Longitudinal cross-country comparisons with random effects regression analysis were employed to explore associations, within and across countries, differentiated by sex and the time to first effect. 

Overall, alcohol-attributed YLLs, YLDs, and DALYs decreased over the study period in all countries, except in Iceland. The burden was lower in those countries with restrictive national policies, apart from Finland, and higher in Denmark which had the least restrictive policies. Changes in restrictiveness were negatively associated with DALYs for causes with a longer time to effect, although this effect was stronger for males and varied between countries. 

The low alcohol attributed disease burden in Sweden, Norway, and Iceland, compared to Denmark, points towards the success of upholding lower levels of harm with strict alcohol policies.

However, sex, location and cause-specific associations indicate that the role of formal alcohol policies is highly context dependent and that other factors might influence harm as well.