Paul D Mowery, MA¹, Corrine Husten, MD², Lei Li, PhD³, and David Weitzenkamp, PhD¹. (1) Statistics, Research Triangle Institute, 2951 Flowers Road, Suite 119, Atlanta, GA 30341, 770-234-5010, pdm@rti.org, (2) Office on Smoking and Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 4770 Buford Highway, N.E., Mailstop K-50, Atlanta, GA 30341, (3) Statistics, Resarch Triangle Institute, PO Box 12194, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709

Measures of mortality associated with smoking are the most important indicator of the impact of tobacco use. They are often needed in the development of tobacco control policy or to support funding for tobacco use prevention and cessation programs. There is need of better tools that allow public health researchers to evaluate the impact of alternative intervention strategies. This paper describes an epidemiological model for projecting cause-specific deaths from smoking, Future SAM (Smoking Attributable Mortality) model, developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Office on Smoking and Health and Research Triangle Institute (RTI). Future SAM simulates changes in smoking status over time in an initial population during a projection period and computes numbers of all-cause and cause-specific deaths attributable to smoking. Users can alter the baseline smoking prevalence rate in the population and model the intervention effects by specifying patterns of changes in cessation, initiation and relapse rates during the projection period. We compare the estimates of cause-specific smoking attributable deaths produced from Future SAM software program with those from historic data and provide examples of analysis with Future SAM program to illustrate the potential use of the model.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand how life table models can be used to project the mortality impact of changes in cessation, relapse, and initiation trends.
• Acquire an increased understanding of the impact of different types of interventions on future smoking attributable mortality.

Keywords: Tobacco Policy, Simulation

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.