CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION
Volume 14 • Number 3 • Fall 2001

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SAMMEC on the Internet

The Smoking-Attributable Mortality, Morbidity, and Economic Costs (SAMMEC) software is a computational program used to estimate the number of annual deaths, years of potential life lost (YPLL), excess medical expenditures, and lost future productivity caused by smoking for the nation and states. A project nearing completion will allow users to estimate the disease impact of smoking on adult and infant populations by using two Internet-based SAMMEC software programs: Adult SAMMEC and MCH (Maternal and Child Health) SAMMEC. The products are in the final stages of development in anticipation of a December release. "The Internet format will make the products easier to use and even more accessible to everyone," said Carole Rivera, BS, a CDC public health analyst and prenatal smoking cessation team leader in the Division of Reproductive Health. "Users can easily compute health and economic outcome measures, enter and save data, and print reports." 

The health outcome measures in the Adult SAMMEC program are derived using smoking prevalence data from the National Health Interview Survey and the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, as well as relative risk estimates from the American Cancer Society's Cancer Prevention Study-II (6-year follow-up). Smoking-attributable deaths and YPLLs must be estimated because "only a couple of states collect data on smoking on death certificates," according to Jeffrey Fellows, PhD, a CDC health economist in the Office on Smoking and Health.

The MCH SAMMEC model is new and will allow users to estimate annual infant deaths and neonatal direct health care costs attributable to maternal smoking. Prevalence data on maternal smoking are from the birth certificate, and mortality data are from the linked birth/death file, both of which are part of the National Vital Statistics System. "Economic costs are from a combination of measures of resource utilization from PRAMS [Pregnancy Risk Assess-ment Monitoring System] data with the average costs of that resource usage from private sector claims data," said E. Kathleen Adams, PhD, a CDC health economist in the Division of Reproductive Health and Associate Professor, Emory University. Users will be able to either rely on the defaults or enter their own data for the selected population to produce smoking-attributable estimates and perform analyses. 

"SAMMEC has been widely used by state and federal researchers, policymakers, and advocates to estimate the disease impact of smoking and to obtain funding for tobacco control activities," said Dr. Fellows. "These studies continue to show that smoking is the single most preventable cause of premature death in the United States, accounting for over 400,000 deaths each year and about $100 billion in excess medical expenditures and productivity losses combined."

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