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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Kristin Thomas, MSPH¹, W. Douglas Evans, PhD¹, Matthew C. Farrelly², Ursula Bauer, PhD³, Stephen Babb, MPH⁴, and Jerelyn Jordan⁴. (1) Health Promotion Research, RTI International, 701 13th Street, NW, Suite 750, Washington, DC 20005, 202-974-7803, kthomas@rti.org, (2) Health, Social, and Economic Research, RTI International, 3040 Cornwallis Road, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709, (3) New York State Tobacco Control Program, Empire State Plaza, Albany, NY 12237-0676, (4) Office on Smoking and Health, Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 4770 Buford Hwy. N.E., Mailstop K-50, Atlanta, GA 30341

Media advocacy is an important component of the comprehensive New York Tobacco Control Program (NYTCP). To evaluate the effectiveness of media advocacy in achieving the program's goals as well as to monitor trends in tobacco-related newspaper coverage in New York over time, evaluators developed a news media tracking protocol including news media data sources, inclusion and exclusion criteria, search strategy, and coding procedures. News media tracking data shows the extent to which NYTCP is shaping the tobacco control public debate and policy agenda, and how news media coverage is associated with NYTCP objectives. In particular, the data can help answer questions concerning how news media coverage of the NYTCP relates to short-term and intermediate program impacts. In this presentation, we examine newspaper coverage of tobacco control issues since the beginning of 2004, including overall volume of coverage and the extent that news coverage was favorable to tobacco control objectives. We also describe an analytical technique for linking respondents to exposure to specific newspapers through New York surveillance surveys such as the Adult Tobacco Survey (ATS). Based on data on newspaper readership by geographic location across New York, we describe a coding scheme to link ATS respondents to specific news media coverage and to relate the nature of that coverage (e.g., focus on specific issues, pro-tobacco control or anti-tobacco control coverage slant) to tobacco-related attitudes and beliefs (e.g., support for the New York Clean Indoor Air law). We describe findings on the relationship between news media exposure and ATS variables.

Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of this session, participants will be able to

• Describe the New York State tobacco news media tracking system.
• Describe trends in news coverage of tobacco issues in New York State since 2004.
• Describe how news media tracking data can be linked with secondary data sources collected by state tobacco control programs.

Keywords: Communication, Media

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No