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This article outlines the design of a Canada-wide system that was piloted in the province of British Columbia (BC) in 2007. The impetus for the project was the perception that [...], This pilot project is a province-wide and nationally-supported collaboration intended to add value to existing monitoring and surveillance exercises that currently exist and are being developed in Canada. The fundamental aim is to create a system that generates a timely flow of data on hazardous patterns of substance use and related harms so as to inform public debate, to support effective policy, and to facilitate policy-relevant epidemiological research. Pilot and feasibiliy exercises have been conducted in relation to developing consistent questions in surveys of general and special populations, treatment system data, data on the contents of drugs seized by police, interviews with police, rates of alcohol and other drug mortality and morbidity, alcohol sales data, and data from the emergency departments. Wherever possible, links with the equivalent national data collection processes have been established to create consistencies. This article provides a general overview of the BC pilot monitoring system and discusses some potential advantages of planning and designing a comprehensive system with built-in consistencies across data collection elements. KEY WORDS: Canada, data collection, alcohol sales data, drug mortality and morbidity.

The need to track emerging trends in the use and outcomes of alcohol, illicit drugs, and tobacco is important for researchers to prepare prevention and intervention programs and for policy [...], Despite various national and provincial tobacco, alcohol, and illicit drug surveys in Canada, tracking trends and patterns of use is difficult. These surveys often target specific populations and are prone to sampling or respondent bias. This article describes a feasibility study to provide alcohol-, illicit drug- and tobacco-related morbidity using hospital separation data. Hospital episodes for diseases and conditions wholly or partially attributable to alcohol, illicit drugs, and tobacco by health authority, age group, sex, and specific ICD-IO codes for British Columbia (BC) were obtained. The most responsible diagnosis statistics were combined with aetiologic fractions for each ICD-IO code to estimate the total burden of substance use by health authority. Hospital admissions attributable to alcohol and tobacco each cause approximately 3 and 5 times respectively, that attributable to illicit drugs. The ongoing analysis of morbidity data will be used to inform the health authorities, and to assist policy makers in creating and evaluating policies. KEY WORDS: Tobacco, alcohol, illicit drugs, Canada, moridity, policy.

Background The Canadian Community Epidemiology Network on Drug Use (CCENDU) was established in 1996 to monitor drug use and its adverse consequences at the community level. Each site collects, collates [...], The Canadian Community Epidemiology Network on Drug Use (CCENDU) Vancouver-site committee is comprised of representatives from national/provincial/local health and enforcement agencies. It collects, collates and interprets recent local data relating to major drug use to produce regular reports exploring Vancouver data with provincial and national comparisons. Meetings of committee members allow identification of current concerns, inform the data and broaden the context for the members. The seventh Vancouver site report since 1996 was published in July 2007. Data trends are explored with input from committee members; changes in data collection and definitions are clarified. The committee strives to share the knowledge with health authorities, policy makers, agencies and the public. KEY WORDS: Canada, drug use, data collection, policy.