Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy

Outpatient antibiotic use data were obtained from the IMS Health’s Xponent^TM database – an information service that covers more than 70% (estimated) of all dispensed prescriptions dispensed in retail, mail andlong-term care pharmacies and uses a projection methodology to represent 100% coverage of prescription activity.

Rates were derived by aggregating the annual prescription totals for each year at the state and national levels and dividing them by the U.S. Census 2000 population estimates for that year and geographic region. Individual dispensed prescriptions for January 1999–December 2007 were grouped according to the WHO ATC classification