World No Tobacco Day: Research Highlights Cessation

Professor of Sociomedical Sciences, Peter Messeri, PhD, has recently completed a report on tobacco use in a cohort of persons living with HIV/AIDS residing in the New York City Region for the HIV Health and Human Services Planning Council of NYC.  Half of this largely middle age cohort is current smokers. Although the cohort has regular contact with physicians, who advise them to stop smoking, rates of sustained cessation over 10-year period remain low.  These results document urgent need for targeting of effective cessation programs for HIV/AIDS populations (CHAIN Report 2012-9, Tobacco Use, Cessation and Medical Provider Intervention, funded under the City’s Ryan White HATEA Grant).

Dr. Messeri, who was part of the original research team  to evaluate the American Legacy Foundation’s truth campaign, has recently returned to this role to work with Legacy staff to evaluate a new truth campaign that is scheduled to be launched later this year. Although adolescent smoking rates declined during the early 2000’s, they have flattened in recent years and there is some evidence that this risk of smoking for the current generation of young people may be shifting to an older age.  Thus this version of the truth campaign is being designed an older, 17 to 21 year old population.

Drs. Amy Fairchild, Ronald Bayer, and James Colgrove in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences and the Center for the History and Ethic of Public Health have been frequently quoted on the topic of e-cigarettes. While they are supportive of e-cigarettes as a harm reduction tool they call for for states to ban the sale of e-cigarettes to minors and for pragmatic FDA regulation that allows these products to successfully compete with tobacco cigarettes. The data on e-cigarettes is still incomplete so they also call for a careful consideration of unfolding evidence and continued assessment of the potential harms. Their opinion pieces have been published in the New England Journal of Medicine (The Renormalization of Smoking? E-Cigarettes and the Tobacco Endgame ), The New York Times (Allow a Challenge to Cigarettes), (The Case for Tolerating E-Cigarettes) and Huffington Post (Liquid Death from E-Cigarettes? You've Got a Long Way to Go Baby). In addition to coverage on the part of CNN, WNYC, NPR, and PRI, Dr. Fairchild was also featured in a video produced by The New Yorker Magazine (Thank You For Vaping) along with Dr. Thomas Farley, former NYC Commissioner of Health.

Denise Kandel, PhD, professor of Sociomedical Sciences in Psychiatry, investigates the natural history of nicotine dependence, risk and protective factors, and consequences of dependence in adolescence and early adulthood.  She is currently investigating parental influences on children’s smoking and nicotine dependence in an extremely large sample of U.S. parents and their children. Results from a separate study of how humans progress from tobacco to cocaine have implications for the current debate on e-cigarettes. Nicotine changes the brain and these brain changes are of particular concern as regards adolescents whose use of e-cigarettes is increasing exponentially, in a period of striking developmental changes in the brain.

Steven Stellman, PhD, professor of Epidemiology, is working with colleagues in the Health Dept. Bureau of Tobacco Control on smoking behavior and PTSD in adult 9/11 survivors, and a related study on smoking and drinking in adolescent survivors. Findings will be published this summer.

Joyce Moon-Howard, DrPH, assistant professor of Sociomedical Sciences, is principal investigator of a community-academic partnership group that was formed to conduct the Harlem POSSE (Point of Sales and Surveillance) Project a pilot study funded by the American Legacy Foundation that examined tobacco point-of-sale advertising and promotion in NYC’s Central Harlem. Findings from the paper "Electronic cigarette advertising at the point-of-sale: a gap in tobacco control research" published in BMJ suggest that the opportunity for purchasing cigarettes and tobacco products is equivalent to 7.25 places per census track or approximately 4-6 blocks.  Tobacco advertisement permeates the area with some found to be below 3 feet which is illegal in New York.  The Harlem POSSE community-academic partnership is presenting their findings to community groups and will explore consumption of new tobacco products including e-cigarettes.

Dr. Moon-Howard is also conducting a tobacco cessation initiative as part of the HRSA funded Downstate New York Healthy Start Project to reduce infant mortality and poor birth outcomes in communities of high risk for these outcomes.  Dr. Moon-Howard and colleagues published two papers on the Tobacco Cessation Program and also developed a Perinatal Tobacco Cessation Toolkit which has been distributed nationally.

Dr. Moon-Howard is a member of the governor's advisory board for New York State Tobacco Use Prevention and Control whose role is to advise the State Commissioner of Health on these issues, including methods to prevent and reduce tobacco use in the state. Dr. Moon-Howard was appointed by New York State Governor David Paterson in 2009.

The Global Health Initiative (GHI) co-sponsored The Global Tobacco Epidemic: Progress, Challenges and Opportunities in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health. The symposium took a wide-angle look at issues in the tobacco fight, from industry response to women smokers and the controversy surrounding e-cigarettes. A panel of experts included representatives from the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the NYU School of Medicine and Mailman faculty from GHI, the Department of Sociomedical Sciences, and Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health. Keynote speaker was Derek Yach, MBCHB, MPH, executive director of the Vitality Institute and a key figure in the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

The Mailman School established the Donald H. Gemson Assistant Professor of Sociomedical Sciences. The recently named professor, who will be joining the School next year, will be responsible for writing an oral history of the Master Settlement Agreement which funded the American Legacy Foundation and its smoking prevention campaigns, smoking cessation programs, and research initiatives to reduce tobacco use.