Risk factors for alcohol use among male adolescents and emerging adults in Haiti

This study examined risk factors associated with alcohol use in the past 3 months among young men aged 15–24 in Haiti using data from the 2000 Enquête Mortalité, Morbidité et Utilization des Services. Findings indicate that life-time smoking, multiple sexual partnerships, witnessing inter-parental conflict in childhood, disruption of parental monitoring, and residing in communities with high levels of youth drinking differentiated experimenters from abstainers. Youth out-of-school employment and co-residence with adults who had a history of drunkenness were among risk factors associated with regular alcohol use. The greater was the number of risk factors to which a young man was exposed, the higher were the probabilities of alcohol experimentation and regular use. The findings call for prevention strategies at the family and community levels and for initiatives that focus on sexual and non-sexual individual behaviour change.