Tag: PATH

  • Westat to Continue Supporting PATH Study

    Westat to Continue Supporting PATH Study

    Image: Andrii Yalanskyi

    The U.S. National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Tobacco Products have announced the award of a third contract to Westat to continue to support the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) Study. Westat has supported the study since its inception in 2011.

    The PATH Study is a uniquely large, long-term study of tobacco use and health in the United States. It provides the ability to follow participants over time, looking at how and why people start, continue, discontinue and re-start using tobacco. It examines how the use of different tobacco products affects health, including cardiovascular and respiratory health. Findings help inform FDA’s actions related to tobacco products under the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act.

    Westat’s team includes hundreds of experts—tobacco regulatory scientists, survey statisticians and methodologists, data and biospecimen collection experts, data scientists and IT staff, along with experienced field interviewers—who have contributed to the PATH Study for many years in collaboration with distinguished academic organizations and industry-leading operational subcontractors.

    “Our work will build on the knowledge we have gained during the past 12 years of supporting the PATH Study and a foundation of over 35 years of tobacco research,” said PATH Study Project Director Charles Carusi in a statement. “We are honored to continue this work and enhance and extend the PATH Study’s impact on tobacco regulatory science while meeting NIDA’s and FDA’s need for sound science.”

  • Latest PATH Data Files Released

    Latest PATH Data Files Released

    Photo: Tobacco Reporter Archive

    The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Tobacco Products and the National Institute of Health’s National Institute on Drug Abuse announced the availability and location of newly released and updated data files from the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) Study, including the following:

    New data sets:

    Updated datasets:

    The Wave 5.5 Special Collection data were collected from youth participants ages 13 to 19 between July and December 2020. Data in the PATH-ATS were collected between September and December 2020 from a subsample of adult participants ages 20 and older, complementing the Wave 5.5 Special Collection. Additionally, Restricted-Use Files have been updated to include Wave 5 Ever/Never Reference Data, and the Restricted-Use and Public-Use Master Linkage Files have been updated.

    Questions about the collection, content, weighting, documentation, or structure of PATH Study data (this excludes questions on statistical analysis or analytic guidance) may be submitted to PATHDataUserQuestions@Westat.com.

  • Researchers Invited to Access PATH Data

    Researchers Invited to Access PATH Data

    Photo: lucadp

    The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is encouraging researchers to access recently published numbers on tobacco consumption.

    In March, the agency’s Center for Tobacco Products, together with the National Institutes of Health, released the first set of widely available Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) study tables and figures that provide information on tobacco use among youth (aged 12-17), young adults (aged 18-24), and adults (aged 25+).

    The content, which is available for public use, may be downloaded from the PATH Study webpage, which also provides information about the analytic methods used to generate the tables and figures.   

    The PATH Study is a uniquely large, long-term study of tobacco use and health in the United States. By following study participants over time, the PATH Study helps scientists learn how and why people start using tobacco, quit using it, and start using it again after they’ve quit, as well as how different tobacco products affect health over time.

  • Study Claims Patches Better Than Vapes

    Study Claims Patches Better Than Vapes

    Credit: kues1

    A new study claims that those using e-cigarettes to quit smoking found them to be less helpful than more traditional smoking cessations aids such as patches and gum.

    The study, published Monday in the journal BMJ, analyzed the latest 2017 to 2019 data from the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) Study, which follows tobacco use among Americans over time.

    “This is the first time we found e-cigarettes to be less popular than FDA-approved pharmaceutical aids, such as medications or the use of patches, gum, or lozenges,” said John Pierce, the director for population sciences at the Moores Cancer Center at the University of California, San Diego, according to CNN.

    A three-month randomized trial in the United Kingdom, published in 2019, found e-cigarettes, along with behavioral interventions, did help smokers quit tobacco cigarettes. In guidance published in late 2021, the UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence decided to recommend that smokers use e-cigarettes to help them quit.

    Another recent study, published in JAMA Network Open, found adult smokers with no plans to quit are more likely to stop smoking if they switch to daily vaping, according to new research led by Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center.

    The Roswell Park study also used data collected from 2014 to 2019 as part of the PATH study. 

  • Study Revives ‘Gateway’ Theory

    Study Revives ‘Gateway’ Theory

    Photo: StockSnap from Pixabay

    Following a decline in adolescent cigarette smoking over the past decades, e-cigarette use presents a new risk for nicotine use disorder, according to a new study. Published Nov. 9 in Pediatrics, the research suggests that e-cigarette use is associated with a higher risk of cigarette smoking among adolescents who had no prior intention of taking up conventional smoking.

    “Research is showing us that adolescent e-cigarette users who progress to cigarette smoking are not simply those who would have ended up smoking cigarettes anyway,” says Olusegun Owotomo, the study’s lead author and a pediatric resident at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C. “Our study shows that e-cigarettes can predispose adolescents to cigarette smoking even when they have no prior intentions to do so.”

    The study uses data collected by the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) study, an NIH and FDA collaborative nationally representative prospective cohort study of tobacco use, from 2014–2016. A more recent PATH study has shown the rate of youth e-cigarette use is declining.

    Among adolescents who did not intend to smoke cigarettes in the future, those who used e-cigarettes were more than four times more likely to start smoking cigarettes one year later compared to those who did not use e-cigarettes.

  • More than a quarter of U.S. adults use tobacco

    More than a quarter of U.S. adults use tobacco

    More than one in four adults and nearly one in 10 youth use tobacco, according to findings from the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) Study, published online ahead of print in the New England Journal of Medicine.

    The PATH Study, established in 2011 through collaboration between the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Drug Abuse and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Tobacco Products, is a uniquely large, nationally representative longitudinal study designed to examine tobacco use behaviors and health among the U.S. population over multiple years of follow-up. The PATH Study is being conducted by Westat of Rockville, Mariland, with Roswell Park Cancer Institute as the scientific lead.

    “Tobacco use continues to be an overwhelming economic and personal burden in this country. This research provides a unique and much-needed long-term approach to understanding tobacco use and the impact those behaviors have on individuals and on society as a whole,” says Andrew Hyland, chair of the Department of Health Behavior at Roswell Park Cancer Institute and principal investigator of the PATH Study.

    The present study reports findings from the baseline wave of data collection, conducted from September 2013 to December 2014. As part of that first wave of the PATH Study data collection, 32,320 adults and 13,651 youths (ages 12-17) were asked about their use of 12 types of tobacco products, including cigarettes, e-cigarettes, cigars, pipe tobacco, hookah, smokeless tobacco and snus.

    The research team found that 27.6 percent of American adults are current tobacco users and 8.9 percent of youth reported using tobacco in the previous 30 days. Use of multiple tobacco products was common among both adult and youth users, with cigarettes and e-cigarettes being the most common combination.

    “These findings will serve as the baseline for comparison to future waves of PATH Study data in our effort to understand changes in use of tobacco products over time, including switching among types of products, quitting tobacco, and trajectories of use of multiple products,” says Karin Kasza, MA, senior research specialist in the Department of Health Behavior at Roswell Park and lead author of the study published today.

    “The study documents that tobacco use is about much more than just cigarettes,” adds study co-author Wilson M. Compton, deputy director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. “Both youth and adults use a remarkably broad variety of tobacco products.”

    “The findings from the PATH Study will help inform the FDA’s efforts to regulate tobacco products in such a way that reduces harm and protects public health. We look forward to findings from future study waves that will help us better understand patterns of tobacco use in the U.S. and, ultimately, how such behaviors influence health,” says David L. Ashley, director of the Center for Tobacco Products’ Office of Science.

    Additional PATH Study partners are the Truth Initiative, the University of California at San Diego, University of Waterloo, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, Medical University of South Carolina, Rutgers University and University of Minnesota.

    This manuscript is supported with federal funds from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Health, and the Food and Drug Administration, Department of Health and Human Services, under a contract to Westat (Contract No. HHSN271201100027C). The study, “Tobacco-Product Use by Adults and Youths in the United States in 2013 and 2014,” is available at nejm.org.