This research was commissioned by the Health Promotion Agency / Te Hiringa Hauora (HPA) to understand and document what data on alcohol use is held within the Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI). This information will support alcohol and IDI researchers to make better use of the IDI for understanding alcohol-related harm in New Zealand. The outcome of the research is that some people who use harmful substances (which includes alcohol but is a broader definition) can be defined using available data in the IDI, as can some people who have health conditions as a result of alcohol use in utero. However, there are limitations in how these populations are captured within the IDI due to the reliance on government funded service use information.

The IDI is a research database managed by Statistics New Zealand (Stats NZ). It includes linked data about individuals from administrative data from government departments and non‐governmental organisations (NGOs), and national collections of survey data.