Reference no: EM133940561
Real-World Case
As mentioned before, many databases are maintained at the state and national level for public use. The National Youth Tobacco Survey (NYTS) serves this purpose and others. The NYTS is used to help provide researchers with information to explore in detail. It also is used as part of a public initiative (Healthy People 2020) for surveillance of trends of adolescent tobacco use (CDC 2019b). Evidence of current topics of secondary data (in other words, databases) is all around us.
A recent report from CDC's 2018 NYTS indicates that the use of electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) is on the rise. The use of e-cigarettes spiked almost 80 percent among high school students and 50 percent among middle school students in the past year. The recent increase is largely due to the popularity of one e-cigarette brand, which looks like a USB flash drive (Boyles 2018).
Vaping, the act of inhaling the vapors of e-cigarettes, by US teenagers has reached epidemic levels, threatening to hook a new generation of young people on nicotine. "We have never seen use of any substance by America's young people rise this rapidly," HHS Secretary Alex Azar explains. Vaping is ingrained in the high school culture with kids using e-cigarettes in school bathrooms and even during class. Kids don't realize many e-cigarettes contain nicotine. Among younger students, candy-flavored e-cigarettes are the most popular, while fruit-flavored products are popular with older students (Finnegan 2018).
Numerous efforts are underway to prevent and reduce tobacco use among young people. The NYTS was designed to provide national data on long-term, intermediate, and short-term indicators to serve as a baseline for data comparison toward meeting the Healthy People 2020 goal of reducing tobacco use among youth (CDC 2018d).
Real-World Case Discussion Questions
1. Research NYTS, covered in the real-world case 7.2, and identify the impact that registries have had on consumer and population health.
2. Investigate activities in your area that is focused on reducing and preventing teen tobacco use. What did you find interesting about the programs? What value does a registry like this provide?