Leadership Academy States

Leadership Academy Metrics

All Leadership Academy states identified at least two baseline metrics – one that reflects cigarette smoking among individuals with mental health conditions and one that reflects cigarette smoking among individuals with substance use disorders;to track their progress after the initial summit; and established a target that they would like to reach for each metric.  The National Center of Excellence for Tobacco-Free Recovery (CTFR) asked states to focus on one (1) mental health based metric from CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS)* and one (1)  substance use-based metric from CDC BRFSS.  Most states chose their two baseline/target metrics from among the following BRFSS metrics:

Current Smoking among Adults with Frequent Poor Mental Health

• Definition: Having 14 or more days of poor mental health (including stress depression, and problems with emotions) in the past 30 days (self-reported)
   

Current Smoking among Adults with Depressive Disorder

• Definition:  Ever been told that you had a depressive disorder (including depression, major depression, dysthymia, or minor depression; self-reported)
   

Current Smoking among Adults who Drink Heavily

• Definition: Men having >14 drinks per week and women having >7 drinks per week (self-reported)
   

Current Smoking among Adults who Binge Drink

• Definition: Men having 5+ drinks on one occasion and women having 4+ drinks on one occasion (self-reported) 
   

A few Leadership Academy states identified in-state metrics that are not available publicly and/or may not be consistently tracked.  These in-state metrics may include, for example, current smoking among Medicaid adults with an MH-related principal diagnosis; or current smoking among adult clients in SUD treatment at discharge.  For those states, CTFR decided to track Current Smoking among Adults with Frequent Poor Mental Health and Current Smoking among Adults who Drink Heavilyas their BRFSS-based metrics to track. 

* The Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System is the nation’s premier system of health-related telephone surveys that collect state data about U.S. residents regarding their health-related risk behaviors, chronic health conditions, and use of preventive services.  BRFSS collects data in all 50 states as well as the District of Columbia and three U.S. territories.  BRFFS completes more than 400,000 adult interviews each year, making it the largest continuously conducted health survey system in the world.  Due to BRFSS data being consistent (collected annually) and comparable (same metric definitions across all states), CTFR identifies BRFSS as being the ideal primary source of Leadership Academy smoking prevalence tracking.