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

Abstract #113278

David T. Levy, PhD, Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, 14403 Sylvan Glade Drive, North Potomac, MD 20878, 301-755-2733, levy@pire.org

Substantial progress has been made in reducing smoking rates and associated adverse health outcomes, but future changes may be more difficult. We will need to better isolate the effects of different policies as well as develop and improve existing policies. This talk will discuss simulation models--focusing on the SimSmoke tobacco control policy model--as a technique to examine policies, smoking rates, and health outcomes. These models may be used to focus on the effects of tobacco control policies in a dynamic system-wide fashion. First, we will focus on the use of simulation models as a guide to policy evaluation. We will discuss how the effects on studies evaluating policies depend on outcome measures, demographics, policy implementation, and time dynamics. For example, we will show that a youth-access policy will have identifiable effects in the near term only on youth smoking rates and that these effects are likely to depend on other policies in effect. We will also discuss how simulation models may be coordinated with a surveillance/evaluation system. The model may provide guidance on the design of the evaluation model, assessment of evaluation results, identification of the effects of other policies, and extrapolation of results to long-term outcomes. Ideally, empirical studies and data collection may be combined with the simulation model to develop a dynamic interactive evaluation/surveillance process. Examples will be provided from SimSmoke models developed for the US, Arizona, California, China, New York, and Vietnam.

Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of the presentation, participants will be able to

• Develop an appreciation of some of the issues involved in translating empirical studies of public health policy effectiveness into practice.
• Develop an understanding of how the effects of tobacco control policies--such as taxes, clean air laws, media campaigns, and youth access policies--depend on the initial level of the policy, the extent of change from the initial level, and how the policy is implemented.
• Develop an understanding that the effects of individual tobacco control policies are likely to vary over time and among different populations.
• Develop an understanding of how the effect of a policy depends on the other policies in effect and the issues involved in examining the interrelated effects of policies.

Keywords: Tobacco Policy, Simulation

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 commertial supporters WITH THE EXCEPTION OF a grant from the National Cancer Institute's Cancer Intervention and Surveillance Modeling Network (CISNET) program.

Recorded presentation