SF‐6D Utility Scores for Alcohol Use Disorder Status and Alcohol Consumption Risk Levels in the US Population

AIMS To estimate US population health utilities for subgroups defined by alcohol use disorder (AUD) status and consumption level. DESIGN Cross-sectional survey. SETTING Community settings in the United States (i.e. excluding institutional settings). PARTICIPANTS A total of 36,042 adults (age 18+) in non-institutional settings in the United States. MEASUREMENTS We used 12-item Short Form Survey (SF-12) data from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions-III to calculate mean Short Form-6 dimension (SF-6D) utility scores across World Health Organization alcohol consumption risk levels-very high risk, high risk, medium risk, low risk and an additional abstinent level-for three groups: (1) the general population (n = 36,042), (2) individuals with life-time AUD (n = 9925) and (3) individuals with current AUD (n = 5083), and assessed minimally important differences (MIDs) between consumption levels. Each group is a subset of the previous group. FINDINGS The general population's mean SF-6D utility was higher than that of individuals with life-time or current AUD across all consumption risk levels (0.79 versus 0.76 for both AUD groups). For all groups, SF-6D utilities increased as consumption risk level decreased to non-abstinent levels, and reducing consumption from very high risk to any lower level was associated with a statistically significant and meaningful improvement in utility. For individuals with life-time or current AUD, becoming abstinent from high-, medium- and low-risk levels was associated with significantly and meaningfully worse utilities. CONCLUSIONS Higher alcohol consumption risk levels appear to be associated with lower health index scores for the general population and individuals with a history of alcohol use disorder, meaning that higher alcohol consumption is associated with worse health-related quality of life.