The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) should be considered as a starting place for anyone interested in alcohol use and abuse. The materials provided here include information on alcohol consumption in general, its effects on specific populations, drinking patters, alcohol's effects on the body, support and treatment, and much more.
The website features a clear and straightforward browsing experience for users. The main navigation bar gives users dropdown options to explore major topics like "Alcohol & Your Health," "Research," Grants & Funding," etc. Searching the site is easy, but there are no options to filter the results, meaning they can be hard browse depending on the search term. A helpful aspect of the site is labelled "Areas of Interest," which lists popular topics to explore.
Like many other subsections of the National Institutes of Health, this website does not seem to invest much time in providing a pleasant visual experience. The color scheme is drab, and many pages are text-heavy without the use of images or other multimedia.
The website provides a broad coverage of topics related to alcohol, but the coverage for individual topics is shallow. However, a few topics feature an appropriate reference list, and many others link readers to other helpful resources.
Again, in keeping with other government health websites, few authors are credited on this website's content. Making up for that perceived loss of credibility is the fact that content is created and reviewed by the NIAAA Office of Science Policy and Communications, a highly credible group in the area of addiction research. Aside from news coverage, there are no posting of review dates are not available on the site, either. The result is that it can be difficult knowing how current the site's content is.
Sponsors / Affiliations: The U.S. National Institutes of Health, operating within the Department of Health & Human Services
Accreditations: None
Additional Features: Videos, podcasts, brochure, fact sheets, drink-tracker tools
Languages: English, Spanish
Contact: niaaaweb-r@exchange.nih.gov