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About Wyoming Tobacco Prevention & Control Evaluation

WYSAC’s evaluation of the Substance Use and Tobacco Prevention Program (SUTPP) assesses the effectiveness of the program and provides information for continuous program improvement. WYSAC provides county-level data to help local coalitions understand community needs related to SUTPP issues, and to track programmatic outcomes. WYSAC also provides state-level data so the Wyoming Department of Health can make data-driven decisions about state-level SUTPP efforts.     

Authors

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Laran Despain

Dr. Despain has worked in public health evaluation since 2007. He has a PhD in psychology that provided doctoral-level training in social science research. He has supplemented this education with a graduate minor in statistics, a graduate certificate in program evaluation, and coursework in public health. Consequently, he is well skilled in survey design and administration, the use of various statistical analyses, and in conducting process and outcome evaluations of state and local public health programs.

He currently serves as Principal Investigator (PI) for the Substance Use and Tobacco Prevention Program evaluation. Dr. Despain’s work in tobacco evaluation has included being the PI for the Synar tobacco sales compliance inspections, the evaluation of anti-tobacco media, reporting Wyoming data from the National Adult Tobacco Survey (NATS), evaluation of the Wyoming Quit Tobacco program (WQT) and the Wyoming Adult Tobacco Survey (WY ATS), and development of annual summaries and topical issue briefs and fact sheets to communicate data about key tobacco issues to non-technical audiences.

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Shinze Kato

Muneyuki (aka Shinze) Kato is an Associate Research Scientist specializing in data management and analysis. His primary tasks at WYSAC are managing, analyzing, and presenting data. He has been working in the evaluation of the Wyoming tobacco prevention and control since 2011.

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Trish DugDug

Trish DugDug, MA, joined the WYSAC team as a full time Assistant Research Scientist in 2024. Trish is currently working in the areas of health equity, chronic disease prevention, and tobacco prevention. She has experience with program evaluation, report writing, and data analysis. When not working, Trish is busy planning beach vacations with friends and family.