Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #110142

Cindy Tworek, PhD, MPH¹, Anna Sandoval, MPH², Mecca Thompson, JD², Sandy Slater, MS², and Frank Chaloupka, PhD². (1) Health Behavior, Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Elm & Carlton Streets, Buffalo, NY 14224, 716-845-4407, cindy.tworek@roswellpark.org, (2) Health Research and Policy Centers (M/C 275), University of Illinois at Chicago, 850 West Jackson Blvd, Suite 400, Chicago, IL 60607-3025

Objective: SmokeLess States (SLS) began in 1994 to provide funding for state-level coalitions to reduce tobacco use, and included a component to strengthen tobacco control legislation and regulation. To obtain measures of impact for SLS coalitions on tobacco control policy, a coding system was developed to track tobacco-related bills and legislative progress. Methods: Tobacco-related bills from January 2002 to December 2003 were downloaded via StateNet and Westlaw. Five SLS evaluation researchers developed coding categories with well-defined criteria, and subsequently coded groups of tobacco bills, validating categories and criteria and establishing coding reliability. By January 2005, 340 bills were coded and Cohen's Kappa was used to report percent agreement, measuring inter-rater reliability. Descriptive analyses included 11 tobacco-related categories, excluding categories with less than 5 coded bills. Tobacco bills were coded for multiple categories, as applicable. Results: There were 505 codes identified among 11 tobacco-related categories. ‘Agriculture' had only 5 bills representing 1.0% of tobacco legislation, while ‘budget' had 116 bills representing the highest percent (23%) of tobacco legislation. ‘Master Settlement Agreement' and ‘tax' both had the next highest percentages (19%) of coded bills. Kappa scores ranged from .47 for ‘miscellaneous' to .91 for ‘Master Settlement Agreement', and overall kappa was .70. Conclusion: Tobacco-related bills for ‘budget', ‘Master Settlement Agreement', and ‘tax' were most commonly introduced, suggesting policy advocates and tobacco researchers can identify and track model bills in these categories. Identifying legislation lacking among specific tobacco-related interest categories can also help focus efforts and resources among policy advocates and coalitions.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe the volume of tobacco-related bills, and their topic areas, which have been recently introduced in state legislatures
• Recognize different topic areas and tobacco-related legislation introduced, enacted, and coded as part of the SmokeLess States evaluation project

Keywords: Tobacco Policy, Legislative

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.