Tag: Health Departments

State changes to alcohol availability during COVID-19: What can state/local public health departments do to protect communities’ health?

Course Objective

  • Describe trends in alcohol use and related harms over the last two decades.
  • Explain state level changes to alcohol availability during the pandemic.
  • Summarize state and local public health strategies to curtail industry sponsored efforts to increase in alcohol availability to protect population level harms.

Date: May 4th 2021

Presenter:
Sean J. Haley, PhD, MPH
Asst. Professor of Health Policy and Management
City University of New York’s Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy


In this month’s Log-in2Learn webinar, Sean J. Haley, PhD, MPH, addresses the alarming increase in alcohol availability and consumption over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. He starts by providing context to the state of Alcohol Use Disorders amongst the U.S. population over the years. In detail, he then discusses the changes in attitudes and behaviors towards alcohol as the pandemic began to worsen and stay-at-home orders were placed. He highlights the unique characteristics of this increased consumption, identifying individual, social and structural factors. Dr. Haley makes sure to emphasize that this is not a temporary problem and substantiates his statement with research from past disasters, decade long trends and industry motivations. He then switches to what can be done to control this problem. He walks us through the many action steps, at varying levels, that can be taken by state and local public health departments in order to protect communities’ health.

Participants will learn the following:

  1. Describe trends in alcohol use and related harms over the last two decades.
  2. Explain state level changes to alcohol availability during the pandemic.
  3. Summarize state and local public health strategies to curtail industry sponsored efforts to increase in alcohol availability to protect population level harms.
Region 2 Public Health Training Center