The Wyoming Health Care Providers Database is a joint effort of WYSAC’s Survey Research Center (SRC) and Center for Information Technology Services (CITS). The database helps the Wyoming Department of Health (WDH) to meet federal reporting requirements and to identify health care gaps.   On behalf of the Wyoming Health Care Commission and the Office of the Governor, SRC personnel are surveying all of the more than 6700 health care providers and facilities licensed in Wyoming. The CITS creates Internet versions of the questionnaires, linked to a relational database that associates characteristics of providers with characteristics of the facilities where they practice. Assistant Research Scientist Michael Dorssom, as Principal Investigator, is coordinating the work.

The Adult Tobacco Survey (ATS) is a federally standardized survey used in many states to examine tobacco use. SRC has conducted the Wyoming ATS since 2002, and WYSAC’s Center for Health and Education Studies (CHES) analyzes the data for WDH. For 2008-09, WYSAC also secured contracts to administer the ATS in two nearby states: Montana and North Dakota.

SRC Manager Bistra Anatchkova supervises ATS data collection for all three states. Senior Research Scientist Laura Feldman serves as Manager of CHES and Principal Investigator on the Wyoming tobacco evaluation. Feldman joined Assistant Research Scientists Humphrey Costello and Russ Miller in presenting results from WYSAC’s tobacco research to the Labor, Health and Social Services Committee of the Wyoming House of Representatives. For example, ATS data reveal that a majority of Wyoming adults, and even a majority of smokers, favor a statutory ban on tobacco smoke in restaurants.

Notably the Wyoming ATS now provides county-level data. Because WDH implements many of its tobacco control efforts through county programs, reliable county-level statistics will help program managers track outcomes. An interactive data tool, developed by WYSAC’s CITS, makes results such as these available to the public elsewhere on the WYSAC website (please see the Data Tools tab, and select Tobacco Key Indicators).