The University of Memphis Center for Community Health recently received a $317,000- grant from the American Legacy Foundation to study the use of tobacco among African-Americans and to develop a smoking cessation program tailored to African-Americans.
The center’s smoking cessation programs have thus far focused on adolescents, with one of its multi-year projects including classroom studies involving seventh graders and tracking their behavior over several years.
Brant Riedel, assistant professor at The U of M working at the center, said it’s time to develop a smoking cessation program for the young African-American adult population.
“There have not been many smoking cessation studies on African-Americans,” Riedel said.
“We know they tend to start smoking later and be lighter smokers.”
The U of M will work with students at a vocational/technical school to determine what type of smoking intervention program would be most effective.
“We know that smoking is more prevalent among blue collar workers,” Riedel said.
During the program’s first year, the center will conduct focus group research on smoking cessation. The final year and a half of the program, a smoking cessation program will be developed based on the research results. The focus groups, which will meet in September, will include 70 participants, and 75 students will go through the cessation program.
“We are trying to find if our methods for smoking cessation will work on different smoking patterns,” Riedel said.
Behavioral studies may include cutting back on smoking before going cold turkey, removing cigarettes from the smoker’s environment, setting a quit date and using a nicotine patch.
Bettina Beech, U of M faculty and co-principal investigator on the project, said being one of the 12 recipients of the grant is quite an accomplishment for The U of M. The grant will allow the study to take place at vocational schools and be tailored to the needs of African-Americans, she said.
“One of the problems is that access to behavioral smoking cessation programs are often limited and/or not tailored for African-American populations,” Beech said.
According to Beech, Shelby County has the 12th largest African-American population in the U.S., with Tennessee ranking No. 8 nationally in the smoking prevalence of adults.
Although studies have shown that African-Americans smoke fewer cigarettes per day than other ethnic groups, African-American men have the highest rate of lung cancer in the U.S. among those groups.
The American Legacy Foundation, which provided the grant, is a national, independent public health organization located in Washington D.C. It was founded in March 1999 as part of the 1998 national Master Settlement Agreement negotiated by a coalition of 46 state attorneys general, five U.S. territories and U.S. tobacco companies. The foundation is funded primarily by payments designated by the settlement.
The center applied for the grant in December 2001, and received word of the grant in May. Funding for the research activity also comes from private, public and government agencies including the National Institutes of Health.
The center designs, implements and evaluates programs to improve or change health behaviors. Prevention of obesity, diabetes and hypertension are also being studied at the center.
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