Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #116874

Amy Bleakley, PhD, MPH, Annenberg Public Policy Center, University of Pennsylvania, 3620 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104, 215.573.1961, ableakley@asc.upenn.edu and Peter Messeri, PhD, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, 722 West 168th Street, Room 1121, New York, NY 10032.

Tobacco control efforts, although not without controversy, increasingly rely on policy as a means of arriving at widespread change within the social and economic systems that sustain tobacco use. Despite recent declines in tobacco use among adolescents, smoking continues to represent a formidable threat to their future health. The context in which smoking occurs among youth extends beyond peer and parental influence to include their physical, social, cultural, and political environments. This study presents a model that (1) explores the relevancy of political climates in the adoption of state tobacco control policies and (2) tests the extent to which these state level political and policy environments are associated with youth smoking rates. Cross-sectional data from the NYTS in 2000 and 2002, the 2000 US Census, and ImpacTeen Legislative Database provided information on state smokefree clean air laws, preemption, school policies, smoking behavior, and standard demographic characteristics of the sample population of youth in grades 6-12. Student data was converted into school-level smoking rates (n=501 schools) in 45 states. Using multilevel structural equation modeling techniques, preliminary analysis demonstrated that states with a liberal ideology and moralist political culture were supportive of more aggressive tobacco control policies and higher per capita spending on tobacco use prevention. Results also showed that states with more aggressive tobacco control policies had lower rates of youth smoking, and that ideology accounted for much of the regional differences in the smoking rates. Smoking rates were lower in more liberal states, an effect partially mediated through state policies.

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