Epidemiology
Westat helps Federal, state, and local governments monitor the extent and nature of ATOD use
and related problems. Our projects focus on gathering and reporting information on drug-related events and
smoking for widely used surveillance systems, providing technical assistance to strengthen state and local
systems, and enhancing understanding of the correlates of ATOD use.
- Sponsored by SAMHSA, the Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) collects medical record information to
provide annual estimates of the number of drug-related emergency department visits. DAWN also collects counts of
drug-related deaths reported by medical examiners in more than 40 metropolitan areas. Through a series of contracts,
Westat's activities have included the following:
- Systematically assessing DAWN;
- Developing, testing, and recommending alternative design elements to improve the utility of DAWN for SAMHSA
and its constituents;
- Implementing a revised and expanded DAWN data collection system;
- Providing statistical and programming expertise; and
- Producing a series of published reports each year.
- Westat has conducted more than a dozen studies that measure the incidence or prevalence of tobacco use. For example,
the 2002 California Tobacco Survey, funded by the state's Department of Health Services, is the sixth
in a series of cross-sectional studies that collected information about tobacco use and related behaviors among California
adolescents and adults.
- The Visual Media Influences on Adolescent Smoking Behavior Study examines the relationship between
viewing tobacco images in contemporary movies and smoking among U.S. adolescents, including the extent to which
adolescent smoking initiation is attributable to exposure to movies. For this NCI grant, Dartmouth Medical School and
Westat are linking the results of a content analysis on tobacco images in movies to data from a national
longitudinal survey of youth on movies viewed, tobacco use, and other factors.
- For CDC, Westat provides technical assistance to more than 75 state and local education and health agencies that conduct
surveys of risk behaviors among adolescents. Westat's activities focus on the Youth Risk Behavior Survey
and Profiles Survey, which monitor the status of risk behaviors among adolescents and of health
education programs implemented by state and local agencies.
For more information about the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Other Drug Studies Research Area,
please send us a message.
