Funding States to Prevent Excessive Alcohol Use

Key points

  • Excessive alcohol use is a leading cause of preventable death in the United States.
  • CDC funds 12 organizations to carry out essential public health activities that reduce alcohol-related harms.
Five people are collaboratively working on a data report that is spread across the table.

Why it is important

Excessive alcohol use is a leading cause of preventable death in the United States. About 178,000 people die each year from excessive alcohol use in the United States.1

CDC-funded organizations2A work to prevent excessive alcohol use and related illness, injury, and death.

They do this by:

  • Building public health capacity and infrastructure in states to track excessive alcohol use and related harms and inform prevention strategies.
    • For example, having designated staff who can make data available to inform prevention strategies.
  • Providing the tools and information needed to carry out public health activities that can prevent excessive alcohol use, including:
    • Publishing data dashboards.
    • Mapping the number and location of places that sell alcohol.
    • Creating and strengthening partnerships throughout the state.

Through these public health activities, we can help to reduce the impact of excessive alcohol use on individuals, families, and communities nationwide.

Funded organizations

These organizations are funded to strengthen public health activities to prevent excessive alcohol use in states.

CDC funding under this award began in 2021 for most of these organizations. However, funding under this award began in 2022 for the organizations working in Maryland and North Carolina.

Center for Advancing Alcohol Science to Practice

CDC is also funding a national organization under this award, the Center for Advancing Alcohol Science to Practice. It provides expert technical assistance and training on using effective strategies to prevent excessive alcohol use and related harms.

  1. This funding opportunity is CDC-RFA-DP21-2105, "Promoting Population Health through Increased Capacity in Alcohol Epidemiology & the Prevention of Excessive Alcohol Use".
  1. Esser MB, Sherk A, Liu Y, Naimi TS. Deaths from excessive alcohol use — United States, 2016–2021. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2024;73:154–161. doi: 10.15585/mmwr.mm7308a1
  2. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Promoting Population Health Through Increased Capacity in Alcohol Epidemiology and the Prevention of Excessive Alcohol Use, opportunity package. Grants.gov. February 17, 2021. Accessed January 23, 2024. https://grants.gov/search-results-detail/328583