More Neighborhood Bars Linked to Domestic Violence

FRIDAY, Feb. 17 (HealthDay News) — Having a high number of bars
or pubs in a neighborhood is associated with visits to hospital emergency
departments due to domestic violence, a new study finds.

But there is no such link with restaurants that serve alcohol,
according to the researchers who examined the connection between
alcohol-outlet densities and domestic violence cases in California
emergency rooms between July 2005 and December 2008.

The study appears online and in the May print issue of the journal
Alcoholism: Clinical Experimental Research.

Researchers knew that alcohol increases emergency department visits for
domestic violence on an individual level, but wanted to further examine
certain neighborhood characteristics, study corresponding author Carol
Cunradi, a senior research scientist at the Prevention Research Center,
said in a journal news release.

The researchers also looked at off-premise outlets: liquor stores and
grocery stores that sell alcohol.

“The key findings of the study are that the density of bars was
positively associated with [emergency department visits from domestic
violence], and the density of off-premise outlets was negatively
associated with [these visits],” Cunradi said.

“For the latter finding, the association was weaker and smaller than
the bar association,” she said, and there was no association between
restaurant density and emergency department visits for domestic
violence.

“Further research is needed to understand the mechanisms that underlie
these associations,” she added.

Emergency visits represent a much more serious level of domestic
violence than police reports, according to Cunradi.

“Police-reported cases may involve threatening behavior, property
damage, loud arguments and physical aggression that may or may not result
in injury,” she said. “In contrast, [emergency department] visits are, by
definition, injuries requiring medical attention.”

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about intimate partner violence.

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