The NSDUH Report: State Estimates of Persons Aged 18 or Older Driving Under the Influence of Alcohol or Illicit Drugs

SAMHSA’s Office of Applied Studies (OAS) has just released a 3 page short report based on data from the SAMHSA’s National Survey on Drug Use & Health (NSDUH) that provides the relative percentages among the States of adults who reported that in the past year they drove under the influence of alcohol or an illicit drug

Available at : http://oas.samhsa.gov/2k8/stateDUI/stateDUI.cfm

2007 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) data available online

The 2007 BRFSS Annual Survey Data and 2007 BRFSS Prevalence Data are now available on CDC’s BRFSS website.

Featured Web Site : Anabolic Steroid Abuse

Source: NIH News in Health, April 2008
Anabolic Steroid Abuse Anabolic steroid abuse by professional athletes has been all over the news. Concerns about body image and athletic performance may lead teens, as well as adult men and women, to use steroids. This site was designed by NIH’s National Institute on Drug Abuse to alert the public to the fact that these are dangerous drugs.

Visit Anabolic Steroid abuse at http://www.steroidabuse.gov/

New Toolkit on Cultural and Linguistic Competence and Upcoming Teleconference

Might this be useful for ATOD prevention programs as well as other youth development programs not funded by SS/HS initiative?

Source: Center for Mental Health Promotion and Youth Violence Prevention e-newsletter, March 2008
The National Center has published a toolkit on cultural and linguistic competence that is based on a model of three interconnected arches. These arches represent organizational structure, engagement, and services/activities/interventions. Together, the three arches provide the support to create a solid foundation for the Safe Schools/Healthy Students (SS/HS) initiative. The toolkit includes benchmarks that grantees can use to gauge their level of implementation in each of the three areas. It also includes corresponding resources that grantees can use to move their initiatives to the next level of implementation. The toolkit is now available at http://www.promoteprevent.org/Resources/clc.

On April 10, 2008, the National Center will host a teleconference to introduce grantees to the three arches framework and the various components of the toolkit. Invitations to this event have been e-mailed to SS/HS grantees. Registration is limited to 10 sites on a first come, first serve basis. Please contact Min Lin at mlin@edc.org with any questions regarding this event.

New Report : State Mandates for Treatment for Mental Illness and Substance Use Disorders

Source: SAMHSA eNetwork email,  4/2/08

A new report is available from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration’s (SAMHSA’s) Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS). The report focuses on state-mandated benefits, state laws regulating mental health and addiction treatment workers, and state-recognized mental health clinicians with authority to prescribe psychotropic medications.

The report is divided into three main sections. The first section describes the current status of state-mandated insurance coverage and identifies those states that require insurance companies to provide coverage for those they insure who have mental or substance use disorders. The second section outlines the type of coverage and diagnostic conditions to which the insurance applies. Finally, the third section provides an in-depth analysis of the authority granted by states to nurse practitioners and physician assistants to prescribe psychotropic medications.

Download/View the Report:
State Mandates for Treatment for Mental Health Illness and Substance Abuse Disorders  (536 KB)
Order Your Free Copy Now! (SMA07-422

NLM announces the release of the NLM Drug Information Portal

Source: NLM Website

The National Library of Medicine is pleased to announce the release of the NLM Drug Information Portal. The site is at http://druginfo.nlm.nih.gov. The NLM Drug Information Portal gives the public, healthcare professionals, and researchers a gateway to current, accurate and understandable drug information from the National Library of Medicine and other key government agencies.

More than 12,000 drug records are available for searching. The search interface is straightforward, requiring only a drug name as a search term, and successful searching is enhanced by the assistance of a spellchecker. Information buttons and balloon pop-ups guide the user by providing helpful hints or a description of the resource and links to the source website. Links to the following resources contribute to the search results: MedlinePlus®, AIDSinfo®, Medline/PubMed®, LactMed, HSDB®, Dietary Supplements Labels Database, TOXLINE®, DailyMed®, ClinicalTrials.gov, PubChem, NIAID Anti-HIV/OI Database, ChemIDplus®, Drugs@FDA, DEA, and USA.gov .

The Drug Information Portal offers a varied selection of resources and focused topics in medicine and drug-related information, with links to individual resources with potential drug information and summaries tailored to various audiences. General drug categories from MeSH are also included in the Drug Portal records.