OBJECTIVE To examine the role of expectancies in adolescent smokeless tobacco (ST) use. METHODS Self-report measures of students' ST expectancies, cigarette and ST use, and peer and family tobacco use were collected from a sample of 978 rural high school students. RESULTS Student expectancy beliefs significantly predicted ST use and intention to try ST in the next year. Student expectancies...

BACKGROUND Tobacco use among adolescence is one of the important preventable causes of death as well as a leading public health problem all over the world. The present study was conducted with the objective of studying the effect of peer-led interventions on tobacco use among adolescents. MATERIALS AND METHODS Twenty schools were randomly selected and ten schools each were identified as clust...

Group Health Cooperative of Puget Sound (GHC) is a not-for-profit, group model, consumer governed health maintenance organisation (HMO). GHC serves over 450 000 enrollees at 29 medical centres, two hospitals, and three specialty centres in the state of Washington, primarily in the Puget Sound area. The cooperative employs 900 physicians, more than 40% of whom are primary care providers. GHC reo...

The main objective of this study was to determine if level of education, gender, and tobacco history affected attitudes of dental students toward tobacco cessation counseling. A secondary objective was to examine the psychometric properties of the survey instrument. First- and fourth-year dental students at one school of dental medicine completed a survey examining attitudes toward tobacco cess...

BACKGROUND Much of the recent health services research on tobacco control implementation has explored general views and perceptions of health professionals and has rarely taken into account middle management's perspectives. We state that middle managers may facilitate the implementation of smoke-free campus bans and thereby improve their effectiveness. The aim of this study was to assess middle...

This commentary looks at the marketing menthol cigarettes to various targeted populations--women, middle school youth and Asian/Pacific Islander immigrants as well as African Americans. The authors take the position that "ethnic awareness" as evidenced in the advertising of menthol cigarette brands to African Americans is just one of four distinct messages that tobacco marketers have used for w...

My personal journey as a tobacco researcher started at the University of Northern Colorado where I was an assistant professor of psychology and helped a student with his master's thesis study on "rapid smoking." This therapy is a format of aversion counterconditioning, the purpose being to turn the previously pleasant experience of smoking into an aversive event. Subjects were asked to puff on ...

BACKGROUND Current legislative language requires the California Department of Public Health, California Tobacco Control Program, to evaluate the effectiveness of the school-based Tobacco Use Prevention Education (TUPE) programme in California every 2 years. The objective of the study was to measure change and to identify the impact of school-based tobacco use prevention education activities on ...

Dentists and the dental team have been encouraged to become an important part of the effort to curb tobacco use. Many health insurance policies, however, do not cover tobacco cessation programs, especially by dentists. The generosity of insurance for tobacco cessation has been found to influence the use of these programs. The dental profession can help by: 1) training more dental students, dent...

BACKGROUND Brief clinician delivered advice helps in tobacco cessation efforts. This study assessed the impact of our intervention on instances of advice given to dental patients during visits on tobacco use quit rates 6 months after the intervention. METHODS The intervention was cluster randomized trial at the dental practice level. Intervention dental practices were provided a longitudinal ...