More than 5 million deaths a year are attributable to tobacco smoking, making it the largest single cause of preventable death worldwide. The primary addictive component in tobacco is nicotine. Its addictive power is exemplified by the fact that by far most attempts to quit smoking fail. It is therefore mandatory to understand the biological…

Objectives: To determine relationships between food and beverage signs and health. Methods: In 12 public housing neighborhoods, food and alcohol signs were counted for stores and restaurants. Health and demographic data were from 373 adults. Results: Multilevel modeling showed higher BMI was related to more store and restaurant alcohol signs,…

Smoking, drinking, and illicit drug use are leading causes of morbidity and mortality, both during adolescence as well as later in life. The determination of how well national and local policy and intervention efforts address teen substance use depends largely on the collection of valid and accurate data. Assessments of substance use rely heavily…

One of the social identities held by people is defined by whether or not they smoke cigarettes. Although this identity can and does change for many people over the course of their lives, most research has not examined the effects of transitioning from a smoker to a non-smoker. Using a life span perspective, our analyses contrasted the extent to…

Objective: Segmentation of populations may facilitate development of targeted substance abuse prevention programs. The authors aimed to partition a national sample of university students according to profiles based on substance use. Participants: The authors used 2008-2009 data from the National College Health Assessment from the American College…

Objectives: To explore weight, weight behaviors, and tobacco and alcohol use among emerging adults by parental education and financial strain. Methods: Cross-sectional analyses of 2010 survey data from an urban Minnesota public 4-year university and 2-year community college (n=1201). Results: Low parental education was associated with lower…

Our goal in the present study was to examine the effects of maternal smoking during pregnancy on infant self-regulation, exploring birth weight as a mediator and sex as a moderator of risk. A prospective sample of 218 infants was assessed at 6 months of age. Infants completed a battery of tasks assessing working memory/inhibition, attention, and…

Background. Smoking rates are higher among those living at or below poverty and among persons with lower levels of education. We report on a formative research project examining patient perceptions of tobacco cessation strategies among diverse, low socioeconomic, urban smokers cared for in community-based primary care medical offices. Method. We…

About 35% of healthy weight adolescent females describe themselves as overweight, and 66% report planning to lose weight. Body weight dissatisfaction is associated with unhealthy weight loss practices including diet pill/powder/liquid (PPL) use. Few studies have examined diet PPL use in healthy weight adolescent females; therefore, Youth Risk…

Maternal smoking during pregnancy retards fetal growth and depresses infant birth weight. The magnitude of these effects may be moderated by fetal genotype. The current study investigated maternal smoking, fetal genotype, and fetal growth in a large population sample of dizygotic twins. Maternal smoking retarded fetal growth in a dose-dependent…

Background: Family cohesion may be a factor to prevent exposure of Hispanics in United States to secondhand smoke. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to evaluate one permutation of Mi Familia No Fuma (MFNF) and its resulting outputs or proximal client outcomes. Methods: MFNF is an approach to secondhand smoke prevention, using family cohesion…

This study is the first to examine adolescent cigarette report stability over 10 years. Six waves of data were utilized from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. This study examined internal/logical consistency and external consistency. Report stability was higher for lifetime use reports than the age of onset reports. Wave-by-wave…

Introduction: Individuals with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) experience irreversible airflow obstruction, dyspnea, coughing, and fatigue. One of the goals of treating individuals with COPD is to improve their quality of life. The aim of this research was to evaluate the 2009 Texas Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS)…

School-based tobacco prevention programs have been proven effective in reducing tobacco use. This evaluation aimed to assess the impact of an online tobacco prevention teacher training program on teachers and their students in Florida schools. A total of 344 teachers, including 72 K-3 grade teachers, 44 4th-5th grade teachers, and 228 6th-12th…

Sixth graders participating in the "Too Good for Drugs" (TGFD) prevention program in comparison to 6th graders not participating show different results by student risk level. Sixth graders from 20 middle schools were randomly assigned to receive the intervention and those from 20 paired middle schools assigned to serve as controls (N =…