Bayview-Hunters Point partnership toward smoking cessation
Creators: name: University Of California Office Of The President
Publisher: name: University of California Office of the President
publisherIdentifier: https://ror.org/00dmfq477
publisherIdentifierScheme: ROR
Year: 2024

description: Among all racial/ethnic groups, African Americans currently have the worst death rate from major tobacco related diseases. Because this group bears a disproportionate burden of tobacco-related health problems, it is particularly urgent that researchers focusing on tobacco control partner with African American communities to ensure that research is culturally relevant and useful. This proposal is responsive to TRDRP’s priority for applied, community-based research that illuminates tobacco use issues and patterns in specific racial/ethnic groups. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 The overall goals of this project are to establish a strong, sustainable community-academic partnership infrastructure, to gain experience working together, and to collect preliminary data and plan a larger proposal for rigorously-designed, community-based intervention research aimed at promoting smoking cessation among adult African Americans (age 35 and older) in the Bayview-Hunter’s Point community of San Francisco. This low income, predominantly African American community has high rates of asthma and other respiratory conditions. A recent population-based survey found that 48% of households had at least one smoker, half of whom smoked indoors. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 The specific aims of this pilot project are to educate academic personnel about the community’s concerns related to tobacco and smoking cessation; to educate community research partners about the research process, tobacco’s disproportionate effects on African Americans, and tobacco industry behavior; to conduct co-designed, partnered pilot research in the community, and to mutually develop a proposal for the intervention study. The project draws on the work of educator Paulo Freire, which emphasizes dialogue and reciprocity. This project also draws on proven models of community capacity building which focus on local community strengths and assets rather than “problems” or “needs.” 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 In this pilot phase, initial focus groups with ex-smokers and smokers who have made a recent quit attempt will be followed by a co-facilitated neighborhood town hall meeting to hear from a broader spectrum of the community. Next, community-academic research partners will use community capacity building strategies to develop an infrastructure for ongoing work. Together, the community-academic team will design a research project and conduct data needed to tailor the cessation intervention to meet community needs and preferences. The outcomes of this project will be a sustainable community-academic research partnership, preliminary studies, and a full proposal for an innovative smoking cessation/relapse prevention intervention study.
 
 
 
 
 
 The future intervention study will measure whether using a culturally relevant tobacco documents intervention enhances motivation to quit smoking and/or affects smoking status at one year following a culturally tailored cessation/relapse prevention intervention.