Published Paper for PhD Student
January 18, 2023
Matthew Myers, a PhD student in Epidemiology, has just published a paper regarding trends in driving under the influence of alcohol and other drugs. Dr. Kip Bohnert, who is Matthew's advisor, also worked on the paper and is the senior author.
Driving under the influence of cannabis, alcohol, and illicit drugs among adults in the United States from 2016 to 2020
Recent shifts in substance use policy and simultaneous increases in substance use behaviors have important implications for driving under the influence, a serious public health problem. Properly informed policy and population-level approaches to address this problem rely on current trend data related to these behaviors. Given that United States data regarding driving under the influence have not been published since 2015 and have not examined drugs other than alcohol or cannabis, we present an important update to this literature using 2016-2020 National Surveys of Drug Use and Health data. The results provide critical and timely information regarding the changing patterns of these risky behaviors in the US population. They also have ramifications for informing public health approaches to traffic-related injury, one of the most prevalent sources or morbidity and mortality in the US.