Objective: The study aimed to design and evaluate a health behaviour change intervention for looked after young people, targeting sexual health, smoking, exercise, healthy eating and non-dependent alcohol and drug use. Design: A pre-post intervention evaluation was undertaken exploring health behaviours and wellbeing. Methodology: The one-to-one…

Background: Health promotion policies targeting risk-taking behaviors are being implemented across schools in Israel. This study identified the most effective components of these policies influencing cigarette smoking and alcohol consumption among adolescents. Methods: Logistic hierarchical linear model (HLM) analysis of data for 5279 students in…

Background: Poor sleep among college students is a major, growing problem associated with lower academic performance, higher rates of health and emotional problems, and development of chronic sleep disorders. Purpose: Though previous studies have focused on individual colleges, our study purpose was to reveal the association of behaviors and…

Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) impose a growing burden on the health, economy, and development of South Africa. According to the World Health Organization, four risk factors, tobacco use, alcohol consumption, unhealthy diets, and physical inactivity, account for a significant proportion of major NCDs. We analyze the role of tobacco, alcohol, and…

This study evaluated the impact and acceptability of a three-hour bespoke training workshop for sports coaches and teachers to subsequently deliver a sport-for-health smoking prevention intervention in primary schools. Questionnaires were completed pre- and post-training by both teachers (N = 24) and coaches (N = 8), and post-intervention by…

The Tips From Former Smokers ("Tips") campaign in the United States primarily targets adult smokers, but considers adolescents an important secondary audience. This study examines the association between exposure to Tips and smoking outcomes in the adolescent population in the United States. We analyzed data from the 2013 National Youth…

Experimental and observational research often involves asking consumers to self-report the impact of some proposed option. Because self-reported responses involve no consequence to the respondent for falsely revealing how he or she feels about an issue, self-reports may be subject to social desirability and other influences that bias responses in…

Background: Participation in extracurricular activities can have positive effects on youth, with greater participation associated with higher academic as well as better socioemotional and behavioral outcomes. Little research has examined differential effects of in-school and out-of-school activities. Methods: This study examines in-school and…

Health behavior theories state that social environments influence health behaviors, but theories of how this occurs are relatively underdeveloped. This article systematically surveys community social capital concepts in health behavior literature and proposes a conceptual framework that integrates these concepts into existing behavioral theory.…

Using data from the Simons Simplex Collection, the present study examined the impact of child externalizing behavior and parental broad autism phenotype traits on substance use among parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (n = 2,388). For both fathers and mothers, child externalizing behaviors predicted tobacco use (OR = 1.01 and OR =…

Background: This study explores the patterns of use and co-use of tobacco and cannabis among Ontario adolescents over 3 decades and if characteristics of co-users and single substance users have changed. Methods: Co-use trends for 1981-2011 were analyzed using the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health Ontario Student Drug Use and Health Survey,…

Although self-report measures of dispositional mindfulness have good psychometric properties, a few studies have shown unexpected positive correlations between substance use and mindfulness scales measuring observation of present-moment experience. The current study tested the hypothesis that the relationship between present-moment observation and…

Monitoring the Future (MTF) is designed to give attention to substance use among the nation's youth and adults. Since its onset in 1975, MTF has been funded continuously by the National Institute on Drug Abuse -- one of the National Institutes of Health -- under a series of peer-reviewed, competitive research grants. The 2020 survey, reported…

Hookah smoking is a form of tobacco use that is growing in popularity in the United States. College-aged students, who are known to experiment with multiple forms of tobacco, are particularly vulnerable to this tobacco trend. There is a common misconception that hookah smoking is not as dangerous as other forms of tobacco, which may help explain…

The aim was to better understand structural factors associated with uptake of automated tailored interventions for smoking cessation. In a prospective randomized controlled trial with interventions only offered, not mandated, participants were randomized based on the following: web-based expert system (QuitCoach); text messaging program (onQ);…