277212
Regional patterns of tobacco, alcohol, and other substance use among adolescents in the United States
Tuesday, November 5, 2013
Jessica Hoag, MPH,
Department of Community Medicine & Health Care, University of Connecticut, Farmington, CT
Tobacco use continues to be the leading preventable cause of death and disease in the United States and substance use is typically initiated during adolescence. Since patterns of use are influenced at the individual, environmental, and population levels, a comprehensive geographic analysis of substance use, particularly tobacco use, is warranted in building targeted evaluation approaches aimed at intervention and prevention. The primary research objective of this study is to visualize substance use among adolescents by substate regions in the US. The secondary objective is to identify potential associations between specific demographic variables and cigarette use on the substate region level. Using data from the 2006, 2007, and 2008 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, estimates of substance use in adolescents aged 12-17 were visualized for the 349 substate regions in the US for the following substances: cigarettes, tobacco products, marijuana, alcohol, binge alcohol, cocaine, and other illicit drugs. Estimates of the perception of risk of cigarette smoking and depressive episodes among adolescents were also visualized by substate region. Hot Spot analysis was performed in ArcMap 10.0 to identify statistically significant clusters of cigarette and tobacco use among adolescents. Specific county-level demographic data from the US Census was aggregated in addition to other attribute variables such as state and local excise tax rates. Tests for association with adolescent cigarette use were performed using multiple regression analysis. Overall, Geographic Information Systems can be applied to visualize, analyze, and evaluate significant patterns of substance use among adolescents in the US.
Learning Areas:
Epidemiology
Public health or related research
Social and behavioral sciences
Learning Objectives:
Compare substate region estimates of tobacco, alcohol, and other substance use among adolescents aged 12-17 in the United States.
Describe the procedure for performing hot spot analysis of adolescent cigarette use in the United States.
Evaluate models testing the association between estimates of substate region cigarette use and aggregated attribute data.
Keyword(s): Geographic Information Systems, Tobacco
Presenting author's disclosure statement:Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I received my MPH degree in epidemiology and biostatistics from the University of Illinois at Chicago. I developed this research project as a first-year PhD Student in Public Health at the University of Connecticut under the guidance of my Geographic Information Systems professor and department advisor. My advisor is the head of the Department of Community Medicine at UConn with areas of expertise in alcohol and drug screening, diagnosis, early intervention, and treatment evaluation.
Any relevant financial relationships? No
I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines,
and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed
in my presentation.
