The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) has developed this guidebook to help communities understand local drug abuse problems and develop a drug abuse epidemiological surveillance system to assess local drug abuse patterns and trends.
The guidebook can be used by States, counties, cities, and communities and is based on the work of NIDA's Community Epidemiology Work Group, a national surveillance network composed of researchers from around the country that has been meeting biannually for more than 20 years to monitor drug use and abuse trends. The guidebook focuses on accessing data from different sources, including medical examiners, coroners, the Drug Abuse Warning Network, law enforcement agencies, the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring Program, surveys, telephone hotlines, and other useful sources. In addition, the guideline book covers the establishment and development of relationships with information sources and reporting formats. Appendixes contain additional information and forms related to data collection and analysis. 32 references and 24 exhibits