Westat Awarded Contract to Continue Supporting the PATH Study

Westat is committed to continuing the trusted partnership with NIH/NIDA and FDA/CTP on the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) Study to understand tobacco use patterns and impacts on public health.

ROCKVILLE, Md., Feb. 21, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- The National Institutes of Health's (NIH's) National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's (FDA's) Center for Tobacco Products (CTP) have announced the award of a third contract to Westat to continue to support the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) Study. Westat has supported the study since its inception in 2011.

The PATH Study is a uniquely large, long-term study of tobacco use and health in the United States. It provides the ability to follow participants over time, looking at how and why people start, continue, discontinue, and re-start using tobacco. It examines how the use of different tobacco products affects health, including cardiovascular and respiratory health. Findings help inform FDA's actions related to tobacco products under the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act.

Westat's team is a seamless integration of hundreds of Westat staff experts—tobacco regulatory scientists, survey statisticians and methodologists, data and biospecimen collection experts, data scientists and IT staff, and experienced field interviewers—who have contributed to the PATH Study for many years in collaboration with distinguished academic organizations and industry-leading operational subcontractors.

For this new contract, Westat will continue using innovative design and data collection approaches for data continuity and higher response rates to deliver useful data and analysis products to NIH/NIDA and FDA/CTP.

"Our work will build on the knowledge we have gained during the past 12 years of supporting the PATH Study and a foundation of over 35 years of tobacco research," notes Charles Carusi, PhD, a Westat Vice President and the project director for the PATH Study. "We are honored to continue this work and enhance and extend the PATH Study's impact on tobacco regulatory science while meeting NIDA's and FDA's need for sound science."

This project is supported with Federal funds from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Center for Tobacco Products (CTP), U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Department of Health and Human Services, under contract to Westat (Contract Nos. HHSN271201600001C and 75N95024C00003) and through interagency agreements between NIH NIDA and FDA CTP and is also supported through a collaboration between NIDA and the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research, the Office of Disease Prevention, the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, and the National Library of Medicine.

About Westat (www.westat.com)

Westat is a leader in research, data collection and analysis, technical assistance, evaluation, and communications. Our evidence-based findings help clients in government and the private sector accelerate advancements in health, education, transportation, and social and economic policy. Since 1963, our dedication to improving lives through research and our approach to projects grounded in investigative curiosity, equity, statistical and data rigor, adaptive methods, and advanced technology are why clients find exceptional value in our work.

SOURCE Westat