Attitudes and Risk Perceptions toward Smoking among Adolescents who Modify Cigar Products

Objective: To examine high school youths’ perceptions of health risks, and personal and parental attitudes toward cigarette, cigar, and marijuana use among youth who use or modify cigars.Design: Descriptive cross-sectional study.Participants: The 2013 Cuyahoga County Youth Risk Behavior Survey used a two-stage cluster sample design to randomly sample public high schools and classrooms. Students in selected classrooms were eligible; 16,855 students completed the survey.Main Outcome Measures: This study examines the association between risk perceptions of and youths’ personal and parental attitudes toward smoking cigarettes, cigars, and marijuana with current use of cigars, cigarillos or little cigars (CCLCs) or modified CCLCs (ie, freaking or blunting).Results: 23.5% of youth reported current use of CCLCs in some way; 11.0% reported current freaking and 18.5% reported current blunt use. CCLC users tended to be male and Black. Perceiving all smoking behaviors as risky, wrong, or wrong by parents reduced odds of using CCLCs. After multivariate analysis, Blacks had increased odds of using CCLCs if they perceived smoking cigarettes as harmful, which was not found among other race/ethnicity categories. Having parents who believed that smoking CCLCs is wrong increased the odds of youth freaking or blunting among all CCLC users. Odds of blunting was greater for those who believed CCLCs were more risky among all CCLC users.Conclusions: Findings suggest that CCLC users may think cigars are safer than cigarettes, and that modifiers may think their use is safer and more in line with their parents’ views than non-modified CCLCs. Ethn Dis. 2018;28(3):135-144; doi:10.18865/ ed.28.3.135

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Assessing beliefs and risk perceptions on smoking and smoking cessation in immigrant Chinese adult smokers residing in Vancouver, Canada: a cross-sectional study

BMJ Open ◽

10.1136/bmjopen-2014-006435 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 5 (2) ◽

pp. e006435-e006435 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

J. M. FitzGerald ◽

I. Poureslami ◽

J. Shum

Keyword(s):

Smoking Cessation ◽

Risk Perceptions ◽

Cross Sectional Study ◽

Sectional Study ◽

Cross Sectional ◽

Chinese Adult

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Predictors of Parental Barriers to Reduce Excessive Child’s Screen Time Among Parents of Children Under Five Years of Age in Selangor: A Cross-Sectional Study (Preprint)

10.2196/preprints.25219 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Elliza Mansor ◽

Norliza Ahmad ◽

Nor Afiah Mohd. Zulkefli

Keyword(s):

Young Children ◽

Screen Time ◽

Parental Attitudes ◽

Cross Sectional Study ◽

Sectional Study ◽

Parental Attitude ◽

Cross Sectional ◽

Children Under Five ◽

Under Five ◽

Parental Barriers

BACKGROUND Globally, there is an increasing prevalence of excessive screen time exposure among young children, including Malaysia. Parents are advised to limit this exposure but there are barriers for many of them to follow this recommendation. To date, there is a lack of studies on the factors that cause these parental barriers. OBJECTIVE This study aimed to determine the parental barrier towards the reduction of excessive child’s screen time and its predictors among parents of children under five years old in Petaling District, Selangor. METHODS A cross-sectional study was conducted from April 2019 to June 2020 among 789 parent-child dyads attending child health clinics in Petaling District, Selangor. Validated self-administered questionnaires were used to capture information on sociodemographic factors, parental influences, child-related factors, environmental factors, and parental barriers. Stratified sampling with probability proportionate to size was employed. Data were analysed with IBM SPSS version 25. Descriptive analysis and bivariate analysis were performed before multiple linear regression was used to identify the predictors of parental barriers. RESULTS The overall mean score of parental barriers was 3.51 ± 0.83, indicating that the average numbers of barriers experienced by parents were more than three. The multivariate analysis showed that the predictors of parental barriers included monthly household income (adjusted β: -0.031, 95% CI: -0.048 to -0.015), parents who worked in public sectors (adjusted β: 0.178, 95% CI: 0.063 to 0.292), positive parental attitude on screens (adjusted β: 0.684, 95% CI: 0.576 to 0.793), parents’ low self-efficacy to influence child’s physical activity (adjusted β: -0.318, 95% CI: -0.432 to -0.204), and child’s screen time (adjusted β: 0.042, 95% CI: 0.024 to 0.061). CONCLUSIONS The strongest predictor of the parental barriers to reduce excessive child’s screen time was the positive parental attitude on screen time. Thus, future intervention strategies should aim to foster correct parental attitudes towards screen time activities among young children.

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Protocol for a Japanese nationwide repeated cross-sectional study to assess tobacco and nicotine product use behaviour after market introduction of tobacco heating products (THPs)

F1000Research ◽

10.12688/f1000research.18920.1 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 8 ◽

pp. 739 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Jason Adamson ◽

Claudia Kanitscheider ◽

Krishna Prasad ◽

Oscar M. Camacho ◽

Elisabeth Beyerlein ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Risk Perceptions ◽

Population Level ◽

Cross Sectional Study ◽

Sectional Study ◽

Cross Sectional ◽

Potential Health ◽

Product Use ◽

Consumer Demographics ◽

One Year ◽

Behavioural Aspects

Background - In recent years there has been a proliferation of alternative tobacco and nicotine products that reduce consumers’ exposure to harmful substances and therefore have the potential to reduce risk to health. Post-market surveillance enables the evaluation of newly introduced tobacco and nicotine products (aka potentially reduced risk products (PRRPs)) at a population level. This study aims to investigate tobacco and nicotine consumer demographics and discover how people are using these products, and characterise behavioral trends as transitions between tobacco heated products (THPs) and other nicotine products. These behavioural aspects, in conjunction with the intrinsic risk of the product, are essential for assessing the potential health effects and establishing a population risk assessment. Design and methods - This epidemiological cross-sectional study will collect data using a self-administered study instrument from the general Japanese population aged 20 years and older. The targeted sampling size is up to 5,000 participants per study wave. The study addresses the following objectives: estimation of tobacco and nicotine use prevalence; characterisation of product usage by product type; changes in use behaviour in general, with particular emphasis on the introduction of THPs in the time period of one year; risk perceptions of different tobacco products and no tobacco usage; and participant perceived health status and quality of life. Discussion - The description of tobacco and nicotine product use behaviour, the estimation of prevalence data, the measuring of product-specific risk perception and the change of tobacco use behaviour within one year will allow for a comprehensive assessment of the effect of introducing THPs into a market. These data could also be used to inform a system dynamics population model in order to estimate the public health impact of introducing a THP into the Japanese market.

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Unhealthy alcohol use is an independent risk factor for increased COVID-19 disease severity: observational cross-sectional study (Preprint)

10.2196/preprints.33022 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Sameer Bhalla ◽

Brihat Sharma ◽

Dale Smith ◽

Randy Boley ◽

Connor McCluskey ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Alcohol Use ◽

Disease Severity ◽

Independent Risk Factor ◽

Cross Sectional Study ◽

Sectional Study ◽

Cross Sectional ◽

Alcohol Group ◽

Emergency Department Admission ◽

Unhealthy Alcohol ◽

Race Ethnicity

BACKGROUND Unhealthy alcohol use (UAU) is known to disrupt pulmonary immune mechanisms and increase the risk of acute respiratory distress syndrome in patients with pneumonia; however, little is known about the effects of UAU on outcomes in patients with COVID-19 pneumonia. To our knowledge, this is the first observational cross-sectional study that aims to understand the effect of UAU on the severity of COVID-19 disease. OBJECTIVE We aim to determine if UAU is associated with more severe clinical presentation and worse health outcomes related to COVID-19 and if socioeconomic status, smoking, age, body mass index (BMI), race/ethnicity, and pattern of alcohol use modify the risk. METHODS In this observational cross-sectional study, we ran a digital machine learning classifier on the electronic health record of patients who tested positive via nasopharyngeal swab for SARS-CoV-2 or had two COVID-19 international classification of disease codes to identify patients with UAU. We then performed a multivariable regression to examine the relationship between UAU and COVID-19 severity as measured by hospital care level, i.e. emergency department admission, emergency department admission with ventilator, or death. We used a predefined cutoff of 0.15 (optimal sensitivity and specificity) on the digital classifier to compare disease severity in patients with versus without UAU. Models were adjusted for age, sex, race/ethnicity, BMI, smoking status, and insurance status. RESULTS Each incremental increase in the predicted probability from the digital alcohol classifier was associated with a greater odds risk for more severe COVID-19 disease(OR 1.15, 95% CI: 1.10 - 1.20). Using the predefined cut-off of 0.15 to group patients into binary unhealthy alcohol group or not, we found that the unhealthy alcohol group had a greater odds risk to develop more severe disease (OR = 1.89, 95% CI: 1.17 - 3.06), suggesting that alcohol positive classification was associated with a 89% increase in the odds of being in a higher severity category. CONCLUSIONS In patients infected with SARS-CoV-2, UAU is an independent risk factor associated with greater disease severity and/or death.

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