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Epidemiology
Original research
Development of a Cannabis Assessment Tool (CAT-1) to measure current and lifetime marijuana use among older Veterans
  1. Salomeh Keyhani1,2,
  2. Ann Abraham3,
  3. Beth Cohen2,
  4. Marzieh Vali2,
  5. Sodahm Robin Yoo3,
  6. Camille Dollinger3,
  7. Stacey Steigerwald3
  1. 1Department of Medicine, University of California at San Francisco, San Francisco, California, USA
  2. 2General Internal Medicine, San Francisco VA Medical Center, San Francisco, California, USA
  3. 3Population Health and Policy Research Group, Northern California Institute for Research and Education, San Francisco, California, USA
  1. Correspondence to Dr Salomeh Keyhani; salomeh.keyhani{at}ucsf.edu

Abstract

Objective To develop a tool to assess current (past 30 days) and lifetime marijuana use in older Veterans.

Setting US Veteran’s Affairs Healthcare System.

Participants 704 older Veterans were screened, 339 completed the initial survey, 100 completed the follow-up.

Primary outcome measure Pearson’s correlation coefficient to assess strength of association between initial and follow-up survey on measures of current and lifetime marijuana use.

Results Both a ‘gram-month’ measure of marijuana smoked in the past 30 days (r=0.83) and a frequency-based measure assessing total number of times smoked in the past 30 days were reliable (r=0.89). Both a simple categorical measure of lifetime use (agreement=85%) and a continuous measure of lifetime use (r=0.82) were reliable.

Conclusions The Cannabis Assessment Tool offers a reliable assessment of past 30 days and lifetime assessments of smoking cannabis in older adults.

  • Cannabis
  • Marijuana
  • smoking
  • Veterans health administration
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2019-034274

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    Footnotes

    • Contributors SK had the idea for the study. SK, AA, BC and SS created the study design. SRY and CD collected the data. MV, AA and SK analysed and interpreted the data. SK, AA, SS, BC, SRY, CD and MV wrote and revised the manuscript. All authors critically revised the manuscript and approved the final version for submission. SK is the guarantor.

    • Funding This research was supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health under grant number R01HL130484-01A1.

    • Disclaimer The funder had no role in the design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis and of the data; preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript; and decision to the manuscript for publication. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not represent the views of the VA or the US government.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient consent for publication Not required.

    • Ethics approval The UCSF Institutional Review Board approved this study.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Data availability statement Data are available upon reasonable request. The dataset will be made available on https://phprg.ucsf.edu upon request after completion of the main study (NHLBI R01HL130484-01A1). Blank survey tool: Available in appendix.