DASH Guide:Smoking Rates

This guide is just part of a larger DASH Data Guide.

Smoking rates for each Census Tract in Allegheny County were produced for the study “Developing small-area predictions for smoking and obesity prevalence in the United States.” The data is not explicitly based on population surveys or data collection conducted in Allegheny County, but rather estimated using statistical modeling techniques. In this technique, researchers applied the obesity rate of a demographically similar Census Tract to one in Allegheny County to compute a smoking rate.

This technique is similar to those used in the 500 Cities project. The 500 Cities project is a collaboration between Centers for Disease Control, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the CDC Foundation.

Citation: Hinojosa, Alberto M. Ortega, et al. "Developing small-area predictions for smoking and obesity prevalence in the United States for use in Environmental Public Health Tracking." Environmental research 134 (2014): 435-452.

What's Included in the Data

Publicly Available

• Census Tract
• Smoking Rates

Where to Find the Data

• Open Data on the Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center's Website
• Interactive Map

Things to Know

• For more information, please see: Ortega Hinojosa AM, Davies MM, Jarjour S. et al. Developing small-area predictions for smoking and obesity prevalence in the United States for use in Environmental Public Health Tracking. Environ Res. 2014 Oct; 134:435-52. doi: 10.1016/j.envres.2014.07.029. Epub 2014 Sep 28.
• This technique is similar to those that were used in the 500 Cities project. The 500 Cities project was a collaboration between Centers for Disease Control, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the CDC Foundation that ran from 2016-2019, and was replaced in 2020 by the Places project.