Drug Abuse Warning Network
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The Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) was a public health surveillance system in the United States that monitored drug-related visits to hospital emergency departments and drug-related deaths.[1] DAWN was discontinued in 2011,[1] but its creator, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), continues to develop other sources of data on drug-related emergency visits.[1]
Organization
Hospitals participating in DAWN are non-federal, short-stay general hospitals that feature a 24-hour emergency department.[2] Patients are never interviewed. All data are collected through a retrospective review of patient medical records and decedent case files. DAWN collects detailed drug data, including illegal drugs of abuse, prescription and over-the-counter medications, dietary supplements, and non-pharmaceutical inhalants.[3] Because the DAWN cases are defined broadly, DAWN captures many different types of drug-related cases.[4] The whole point of this organization is to find out how many people abuse most drugs. They also seek short-stay hospitals, when a case is drug-related.
History
In 1974, DAWN was designed and developed by the scientific staff of the DEA's Office of Science and Technology. It was jointly funded with the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA).[2] DAWN then became a division of the United States Department of Justice before becoming part of NIDA in 1980. On October 1, 1992, DAWN became part the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services.[5] SAMHSA has contracted with Westat, a private research corporation, to manage the New DAWN on the agency's behalf.[6]
Controversy
Information collected by DAWN is widely cited by drug policy officials, who have sometimes confused drug-related episodes –
References
- ^ a b c SAMHSA (2016), Emergency Department Data, archived from the original on 2016-09-23, retrieved 2016-09-08.
- ^ a b [1] Archived December 1, 2006, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ [2] Archived July 27, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ [3] Archived February 24, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "Office of National Drug Control Policy | The White House". Whitehousedrugpolicy.gov. Archived from the original on 2010-11-19. Retrieved 2015-03-14.
- ^ [4] Archived July 4, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "Emergency Room Visits". Drugwardistortions.org. 2009-07-15. Archived from the original on 2015-03-23. Retrieved 2015-03-14.
- ^ "Collecting the Data Answers and Questions". Archived from the original on May 27, 2010. Retrieved February 22, 2011.
- ^ [5] Archived May 23, 2012, at the Wayback Machine