The State Tobacco Activities Tracking and Evaluation (STATE) System: Connecting Stakeholders to Disparate Data for Evaluation and Program Improvement

Tobacco remains the leading preventable cause of death in the United States, and a source of substantial excess medical expenditure. As part of its mission to reduce the incidence of tobacco related disease and preventable death, CDC’s Office on Smoking created the National Tobacco Control Program (NTCP). The NTCP funds tobacco control activities in all 50 states, 7 territories and the District of Columbia.

The data necessary to evaluate state tobacco control programs, such as tobacco use prevalence, tobacco-related legislation, and policies are available from many sources.  It is, however, often difficult to obtain and compare these data.  To disseminate state level data, OSH created the State Tobacco Activities Tracking and Evaluation (STATE) System.  The STATE System presents over 330 state-level data measures categorized into seven topic areas:  Demographics, Behaviors, Economics, Environment, Funding, Health Consequences and Costs, and Legislation. 

The System is designed to integrate many data sources to provide comprehensive summary data and facilitate research and consistent data interpretation.  Public health professionals can use the System’s broad range of data and advanced reporting features to report on detailed single state data, trends over time, compare data for multiple states, export data to a spreadsheet for further analysis, and produce attractive graphs to export for use in presentations as well as to identify program priorities and measure progress toward program goals.