<p>The Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) is a nationally representative public health surveillance system that has monitored
drug related emergency department (ED) visits to hospitals since the early 1970s. First administered by the Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), the responsibility for DAWN now rests with the Substance
Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's (SAMHSA) Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality (CBHSQ). Over
the years, the exact survey methodology has been adjusted to improve the quality, reliability, and generalizability of the
information produced by DAWN. The current approach was first fully implemented in the 2004 data collection year.<br />DAWN
relies on a longitudinal probability sample of hospitals located throughout the United States. To be eligible for selection
into the DAWN sample, a hospital must be a non-Federal, short-stay, general surgical and medical hospital located in the United
States, with at least one 24-hour ED. DAWN cases are identified by the systematic review of ED medical records in participating
hospitals. The unit of analysis is any ED visit involving recent drug use. DAWN captures both ED visits that are directly
caused by drugs and those in which drugs are a contributing factor but not the direct cause of the ED visit. The reason a
patient used a drug is not part of the criteria for considering a visit to be drug-related. Therefore, all types of drug-related
events are included: drug misuse or abuse, accidental drug ingestion, drug-related suicide attempts, malicious drug poisonings,
and adverse reactions. DAWN does not report medications that are unrelated to the visit.<br />The DAWN public-use dataset
provides information for all types of drugs, including illegal drugs, prescription drugs, over-the-counter medications, dietary
supplements, anesthetic gases, substances that have psychoactive effects when inhaled, alcohol when used in combination with
other drugs (all ages), and alcohol alone (only for patients aged 20 or younger). Public-use dataset variables describe and
categorize up to 22 drugs contributing to the ED visit, including toxicology confirmation and route of administration. Administrative
variables specify the type of case, case disposition, categorized episode time of day, and quarter of year. Metropolitan area
is included for represented metropolitan areas. Created variables include the number of unique drugs reported and case-level
indicators for alcohol, non-alcohol illicit substances, any pharmaceutical, non-medical use of pharmaceuticals, and all misuse
and abuse of drugs. Demographic items include age category, sex, and race/ethnicity. Complex sample design and weighting variables
are included to calculate various estimates of drug-related ED visits for the Nation as a whole, as well as for specific metropolitan
areas, from the ED visits classified as DAWN cases in the selected hospitals.This study has 1 Data Set.</p>