Search

New Mexico has extraordinarily high injury mortality rates. To better characterize the injury problem in New Mexico, we calculated proportionate injury mortality and age-adjusted and age-specific injury mortality rates for the state's 3 major ethnic groups--American Indians, Hispanics, and non-Hispanic whites. According to death certificate data collected from 1958 to 1982 and US population census figures, age-adjusted mortality rates for total external causes varied widely between the sexes and among the ethnic groups. Males in each ethnic group consistently had higher average annual age-adjusted external mortality rates than females. Injury mortality rates for American Indians of both sexes were 2 to 3 times higher than those for the other New Mexico ethnic groups. Motor vehicle crashes were the leading cause of death from injury for all 3 groups. Homicide accounted for twice the proportion of injury death in Hispanic compared with non-Hispanic white males (12.5% and 6.1%, respectively), while the proportion of males dying of suicide was highest in non-Hispanic whites. Deaths from excessive cold and exposure were leading causes of injury mortality for American Indians, but these causes were not among the leading causes of injury mortality for Hispanics or non-Hispanic whites. We conclude that the minority populations in New Mexico are at high risk for injury-related death and that the major causes of injury mortality vary substantially in the state's predominant ethnic populations.

We examined mortality from lung cancer and from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in Hispanic White, Other White, and Native American residents of New Mexico during the period 1958-82. Age-specific mortality was calculated by combining death certificate data with population estimates based on the 1960, 1970, and 1980 censuses that were adjusted for inconsistencies in the designation of race and ethnicity. In Other Whites, age-adjusted mortality rates from lung cancer and from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease increased progressively in males and females. Mortality rates for both diseases also increased in Hispanics during the study period, but the most recent rates for Hispanics were well below those for Other Whites. Age-specific mortality rates for lung cancer declined for more recently born Hispanic women at older ages. In Native Americans, rates for both diseases were low throughout the study period and did not show consistent temporal trends.

We conducted a survey of cigarette usage among Hispanic and non-Hispanic White school children in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The distributions of current, experimental, and never smokers were similar in the two groups. Among smokers, the average weekly cigarette consumption was 19 for Hispanic White males, 14 for non-Hispanic White males, 16 for non-Hispanic White females, and nine for Hispanic White females. Educational programs are needed to maintain the low-risk status of Southwestern Hispanics for cigarette-related diseases.