ARDI Announcements

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April 25, 2022

Updated data were released in ARDI on April 19, 2022; however, system glitches were identified and all glitches were resolved on April 25, 2022. System glitches included the following programming issues:

  • Inability to upload CSV data sets in the Custom User Portal.
  • Estimates in the state reports for deaths from motor vehicle traffic crashes were shown based on the national-level alcohol-attributable fractions instead of the state-specific alcohol-attributable fractions. This resulted in imprecise estimates of deaths and years of potential life lost from motor vehicle traffic crashes, and the total estimates, being posted in the state reports. The estimates in the national-level reports were not affected.

We apologize for this inconvenience for users who accessed the state reports in ARDI between April 19–25, 2022.

April 19, 2022

The ARDI application has been updated, including:

  • New estimates of alcohol-attributable deaths and years of potential life lost
    • National and state estimates of average annual alcohol-related deaths and years of potential life lost are now based on the 2015–2019 mortality data from the National Vital Statistics System.
  • ARDI methodologic updates and programming changes
    • The 2015–2019 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) data are used for estimating the prevalence of average daily alcohol consumption. Updated methods that adjust for the underreporting of self-reported alcohol use in the BRFSS using per capita alcohol sales data are now used in ARDI, which affects estimates that are calculated using indirect alcohol-attributable fractions, including the number of alcohol-attributable deaths and years of potential life lost for most of the chronic conditions, as well as the totals. This method for adjusting the prevalence of alcohol consumption is described in detail in Esser et al. (2022) and summarized on the ARDI Methods webpage. It involves conservatively accounting for a portion (73%) of per capita alcohol sales when calculating the prevalence of low, medium, and high average daily alcohol consumption. The prevalence estimates generated using the previous prevalence adjustment method, referred to as “indexing” — a survey-based adjustment to account for binge drinking — are available for 2015–2019 data upon request if ARDI users are interested in performing custom analyses using those estimates.
    • ARDI now captures deaths from the International Classification of Disease (ICD)-10 code K70.0 for estimating deaths and years of potential life lost from alcoholic fatty liver, as part of the alcoholic liver disease condition. Due to a statistical programming error, deaths coded as K70.0 were not captured in earlier iterations of ARDI. The average annual number of deaths in the United States coded as K70.0 during 2011–2015 was 379.
    • The national and state alcohol-attributable fractions for deaths from motor vehicle traffic crashes are now based on 2015–2019 data from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System. These updated alcohol-attributable fractions are available by selecting “alcohol-attributable fractions” from the drop-down menu of report options in ARDI. In addition, the estimated average annual number of alcohol-attributable deaths from motor vehicle traffic crashes now includes people of all ages. The 2011–2015 estimates of average annual alcohol-attributable deaths from motor vehicle traffic crashes included people in the following age groups: <1, 15–29, 35–39, 45–49, 55–59, and 65–69 years.
    • The alcohol-attributable fraction for “pancreatitis, acute” is calculated using a single relative risk estimate for all levels of average daily alcohol consumption. Therefore, when calculating deaths from acute pancreatitis from excessive alcohol use (medium and high average daily alcohol consumption levels), the reference group for the relative risks is non-drinking rather than low average daily alcohol consumption.
    • The alcohol-attributable fractions for esophageal varices and portal hypertension were updated based on the relevant 2015–2019 death data, as explained in the alcohol-attributable fractions report.

With these updates to ARDI, estimates of alcohol-attributable deaths or years of potential life lost generated in the current version of ARDI should not be compared with estimates that were generated using the default reports or analyses in the Custom Data Portal prior to April 19, 2022.

  • New features
    • The updated ARDI Custom Data User Portal is now live, along with the accompanying Custom Data User Manual.
    • The 2015–2019 ARDI data are available in the CDC’s National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion’s Open Data Portal.