Tobacco consumption continues to be the leading cause of preventable disease and death in the United States. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates the manufacture, distribution, and marketing of tobacco products - specifically cigarettes, cigarette tobacco, roll-your-own tobacco, and smokeless tobacco - to protect public health and reduce tobacco use in the United States. Given the strong social component inherent to tobacco use onset, cessation, and relapse, and given the heterogeneity of those social interactions, agent-based models have the potential to be an essential tool in assessing the effects of policies to control tobacco. Assessing the Use of Agent-Based Models for Tobacco Regulation describes the complex tobacco environment; discusses the usefulness of agent-based models to inform tobacco policy and regulation; presents an evaluation framework for policy-relevant agent-based models; examines the role and type of data needed to develop agent-based models for tobacco regulation; provides an assessment of the agent-based model developed for FDA; and offers strategies for using agent-based models to inform decision making in the future.

This report considers the biological and behavioral mechanisms that may underlie the pathogenicity of tobacco smoke. Many Surgeon General's reports have considered research findings on mechanisms in assessing the biological plausibility of associations observed in epidemiologic studies. Mechanisms of disease are important because they may provide plausibility, which is one of the guideline criteria for assessing evidence on causation. This report specifically reviews the evidence on the potential mechanisms by which smoking causes diseases and considers whether a mechanism is likely to be operative in the production of human disease by tobacco smoke. This evidence is relevant to understanding how smoking causes disease, to identifying those who may be particularly susceptible, and to assessing the potential risks of tobacco products.

The "Handbook" covers how the effects of a tobacco control policy are determined, the core constructs for understanding how and why a given policy works, the potential moderator variables to consider when evaluating a given policy and the data sources that might be useful for evaluation. The "Handbook" includes logic models outlining relevant constructs for evaluating the effectiveness of policies on tobacco taxation, smoke-free environments, tobacco product regulations, limits on tobacco marketing communications, product labeling, anti-tobacco public communication campaigns and tobacco use cessation interventions.

The second edition of this popular book introduces agent-based modeling, an increasingly popular approach enabling researchers to build models where individual entities and their interactions are directly represented.

Multilevel Modeling is a concise, practical guide to building models for multilevel and longitudinal data. Author Douglas A. Luke begins by providing a rationale for multilevel models; outlines the basic approach to estimating and evaluating a two-level model; discusses the major extensions to mixed-effects models; and provides advice for where to go for instruction in more advanced techniques. Rich with examples, the Second Edition expands coverage of longitudinal methods, diagnostic procedures, models of counts (Poisson), power analysis, cross-classified models, and adds a new section added on presenting modeling results. A website for the book includes the data and the statistical code (both R and Stata) used for all of the presented analyses.

The ultimate guide to dissemination and implementation research for public health, medicine, and the social sciences In the past twenty years, dissemination and implementation (D&I) research has sought to narrow the gap between the discovery of new knowledge and its application in public health, mental health, and health care settings. The challenges of moving research to practice and policy are universal, and future progress calls for collaborative partnerships and cross-country research. The fundamental tenet of D&I research-taking what we know about improving health and putting it into practice-must be the highest priority. Dissemination and Implementation Research in Health is the definitive roadmap to effecting change in health and science from today's leading D&I researchers. With insights from around the globe, these scholars collectively address key issues in the field including how to evaluate evidence based on effective interventions, how to design an appropriate study, and how to track a set of essential outcomes. Their work has been updated in this third edition with a strong focus on health equity and new chapters on de-implementation, scale-up and sustainment, and training and capacity building. This new edition also focuses on barriers to uptake of evidence-based interventions in the communities where people live their lives and from the social service agencies, hospitals, and clinics where they receive care. Now in its third edition, Dissemination and Implementation Research in Health remains the quintessential guide to making research more consequential for researchers and practitioners in health and the social sciences.