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Affirmative action bans linked to increased smoking among minority students in their teens (and beyond)

lit cigarette

Affirmative action bans may do more damage to minority students than just negatively impact their educational and socioeconomic opportunities; a study has linked these bans with an increase in health risk behaviors, such as smoking, among those in the 11th and 12th grade. Authors include Harvard RWJF Health & Society Scholars program alumni Rourke O’Brien and Alexander Tsai (who is also a Harvard Pop Center faculty member) as well as…

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What explains difference in heart rate recovery among those of varying levels of socioeconomic status?

Harvard Pop Center Director Lisa Berkman and colleagues, including recent visiting scientist Cathal McCrory, are authors on a paper published in The Journals of Gerontology Series A that links higher levels of educational attainment with better heart rate recovery, which is an important biomarker of cardiovascular health and predictor of mortality. Lifetime smoking was found to play a significant role in explaining some of the differences between the educational levels.

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Are Adolescent Smokers Using E-Cigarettes to Help Them Quit?

One of our RWJF Health & Society Scholars, Adam Lippert, PhD, has recently published a paper on which adolescent subgroups are using e-cigarettes and whether they are using them to help them quit smoking. The study has been published in the American Journal of Health Promotion.

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Can friends help friends quit smoking?

According to a new study published in  Journal of Health and Social Behavior and co-authored by RWJF alum Steven Haas, adolescents tend to be more powerful in influencing their friends to start smoking than in helping them to quit. “In order to become a smoker, kids need to know how to smoke, they need to know where to buy cigarettes and how to smoke without being caught, which are all things they…

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Team of Harvard Pop Center researchers publish paper on impact of unemployment on smoking and drinking

A team of Harvard Pop Center researchers, including current Yerby Fellow Mariana Arcaya, and Pop Center-affiliated faculty members Maria Glymour, Ichiro Kawachi, and SV Subramanian, have published a paper in Social Science & Medicine that looks at individual and spousal unemployment as predictors of smoking and drinking behavior.

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Human rights violations and smoking status among South African adults

Until now, no public health study has examined South Africans’ experiences of human rights violations and smoking. The first paper to examine this relationship has just been published in Social Science & Medicine;  Pop Center faculty members Ichiro Kawachi, Cassandra Okechukwu, and David Williams are co-authors. The results of their analysis suggest that smoking behaviors are more prevalent in South Africans who report that they have experienced violations of their human…

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