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State Health Compare

Percent of adults consuming four (women) or five (men) or more drinks on one occasion during the past 30 days

Measure Overview


IMPORTANT NOTE: This measure has been retired. SHADAC is no longer updating this measure. 

In order to maintain State Health Compare (SHC) as a relevant and current resource for data users, SHADAC regularly evaluates SHC measures to ensure they inform current health care and health policy discussions. We also want to be able to update measures consistently with recent data. As a part of this process, SHADAC retires existing measures if they can no longer be updated, are no longer relevant, are little used by SHC users, or fall outside of SHADAC’s areas of focus. 

You can still access this measure’s data & visualizations, but it will not be updated moving forward. If you’d like to explore active related measures, check out some of the following:

Excessive use of alcohol is associated with a wide range of adverse health outcomes, such as chronic diseases, injuries, and early death. Binge drinking is the most common pattern of excessive alcohol use in the United States. In addition to the potential harms of binge drinking at the individual level, binge drinking can cause physical, mental, and emotional harm to unborn children, family members, and other individuals exposed to binge drinking behavior, making it a serious public health issue. Understanding the prevalence of and trends in binge drinking across the U.S. and among different demographic groups can help identify areas for targeted interventions and inform policymakers and the general public on ways to combat excessive alcohol use.

State Health Compare provides annual, state-level rates of adults who reported binge drinking during the past 30 days. Estimates are available beginning in 2005 and are based on findings from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) survey. Two breakdowns are available for this measure: educational attainment and race/ethnicity.

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