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A Brown School-based center recently joined the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids to conduct a nationwide media campaign to publicize the center’s research on tobacco retail density in 30 U.S. cities. The two-week campaign reached over 3 million broadcast viewers, radio listeners, and on-line readers in more than two dozen of the nation’s largest media markets.

Funded by the National Cancer Institute, the Advancing Science and Practice in the Retail Environment (ASPiRE) Center is a consortium of researchers from Washington University, Stanford University and the University of North Carolina that investigate how tobacco retailer density and innovative retail tobacco interventions impact people and communities.

This effort teamed the ASPiRE Center with the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids (CTFK), one of the nation’s leading anti-smoking advocacy groups, to focus attention on the proximity of tobacco retailers to schools as districts around the country prepared to begin classes in the fall. ASPiRE’s Dissemination & Implementation team, led by Douglas Luke, professor and director of the Center for Public Health Systems Science at the Brown School, worked with CTFK to create website resources and other materials for the media.

ASPiRE’s Lisa Henriksen, CTFK President Matthew Myers, and several members of ASPiRE’s Community Advisory Board (CAB) from 30 cities around the U.S. participated in TV and radio interviews that focused on the research led by Henriksen and her team at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

Laura Brossart, who manages ASPiRE’s D&I team at the Brown School, said the campaign should give a boost to local advocates and legislators in their efforts to reduce smoking and vaping. Each CAB city now has a resource page on the ASPiRE website with fact sheets, a city-specific press release, and shareable social media graphics. The resources feature data for each city about tobacco retailers near schools and in low-income neighborhoods. The campaign resulted in a 438% increase in traffic to the website.

“Our new, evidence-based resources are now in the hands of tobacco control advocates and policymakers who can use them in their efforts to limit access to tobacco products in their communities,” Brossart said.

Myers said the research was impressive.

“This study powerfully illustrates how the tobacco industry continues to target kids and vulnerable communities with its deadly and addictive products,” he said. “The tobacco industry is hooking a new generation of kids by aggressively marketing its products, including flavored e-cigarettes and menthol cigarettes, in locations where kids are continually exposed and have easy access. Policymakers must take action to protect our kids and communities, starting with a ban on the sale of all flavored tobacco products.”

The Center’s goal is to build a strong base of scientific evidence for effective retail policies to reduce tobacco use, tobacco-related disparities, and the public health burden of tobacco. ASPiRE researchers work in partnership with a Community Advisory Board comprised of tobacco control program staff from 30 large U.S. cities, representatives from several tobacco control organizations and agencies, and legal experts.

Henriksen said the media tour was an important milestone in the center’s aim to produce research with impact. “The collaboration with CTFK was exciting and they amplified the research results for 30 U.S. cities in ways that can inform tobacco control policies and improve community health,” she said.

Research by her team illustrated that across the ASPiRE cities, tobacco retailers are:

“Living in a neighborhood that is saturated with tobacco retailers makes kids more likely to try tobacco products, and it makes it more difficult for those who are already using tobacco products to quit,” Henriksen told an interviewer from Phoenix. She added that even though the city’s schools themselves may be closed due to COVID, the proximity still mattered. “With 50% of city residents living within a 10-minute walk of a tobacco retailer, whether or not kids are at school this fall, they have easy access to these products,” she said.

Dave Lemmon, Director of Media Relations for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, said the media tour exceeded expectations.

“This joint effort was a tremendous success for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and we look forward to collaborating with the ASPiRE team again in the future,” he said. “In fact, there never would have been a media tour in the first place without these important findings about how ubiquitous tobacco retailers truly are in so many different communities.”

The Brown School is proud to introduce our newest cohort of 15 doctoral students who are passionate about pursuing equity across a spectrum of vulnerable populations. Many are interested in working with children, families and elders to improve mental health, financial stability, and health outcomes for street-involved mothers through doula use. Several are interested in policy, statistics, health communication, international gender-based violence, and advancing health equity for the LGBTQ+ community.

New Students in Social Work

Kyria Brown received her MSW and MPH at the University of Denver – Graduate School of Social Work and the University of Colorado-Anschutz Colorado School of Public Health, respectively. She worked as a doula for a decade, working primarily with low-income women in rural areas. She also has worked extensively with street-involved women in Colorado through non-profit and research involvement. Her research interests lie in reducing birth-related trauma and health disparities for street-involved women through doula use. Kyria is a fan of natural history museums, which she love to visit with her daughters.

Cao Fang was born and raised in Chongqing, a southwest city of China. She earned two MSWs, from Peking University and the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. Upon graduating, she returned to Beijing and worked as a behavioral therapist for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Her research focuses include family affected by children’s mental health condition, especially ASD and ADHD, mental health service for children and family with special needs, service delivery and evaluation. Cao is learning Thai boxing.

Gregory Gross was born and raised in Iowa. He worked for a few years in human services and the financial services industry before earning his MSW from the University of Iowa. Greg’s master’s thesis investigated the impact of norms, attitudes and control factors related to HIV risk reduction behaviors among gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men (MSM) in Iowa. Greg’s research interests focus on health equity, social determinants of health, HIV prevention interventions, and community-engaged research. He has over a decade of experience working with this population in the field. A fan of choral music, Greg sang with the Des Moines Gay Men’s Chorus for 10 years.

Dylan Jones grew up in Sacramento, CA, and moved to New York for undergraduate studies. He then worked as a caseworker for a community-based program in NYC, supporting high school youth struggling with school attendance throughout the five boroughs. Dylan earned his MSW from Columbia with a focus on social policy analysis. He then worked at a foster care agency, applying his interests in data analytics to improve the outcomes of children and families in the child welfare system. Dylan’s research interests include child welfare, kinship foster care, and administrative data analysis. A gummy bear connoisseur, he prefers Black Forrest gummy bears over Haribo.

Selina Miller Forsyth has lived in seven U.S. states, as well as Costa Rica, Mexico, and Peru. She earned her MSW from Brigham Young University. Experiences providing services for refugees, survivors of domestic violence, and patients in psychiatric hospitals led her to focus on a common need among vulnerable populations: financial stability. Most recently, Selina ran the Financial Learning Center at Community Action Services and Food Bank in Provo, Utah, where she provided financial coaching for low-income individuals and developed an emergency savings intervention. Her research interests are financial stability and asset building among vulnerable populations. A budding author, Selina will soon have her first poem published as part of a collection.

Jennifer Nattabi was born and raised in Uganda. Before earning her MSW at the Brown School, Jennifer worked as a high school teacher and as a Projects Coordinator with ICHAD (International Center for Child Health and Development). After graduation, Jennifer returned to her home country in Uganda and started Girls on the Adolescent Ladder (GAL Project) at her former high school; the initiative provided feminine products and motivational talks to teenage girls. Her research interests include asset-building policy, international child welfare, child poverty, and social mobility among adolescent girls. Jennifer is a social person who loves music and parties. 

JaNiene Peoples was raised in LaVergne, Tennessee and earned her MS in Health Education from Texas A&M University. As a certified health education specialist and wellbeing coach, JaNiene spent four years at Vanderbilt University supporting the personal development and academic success of students using an integrative, holistic, culturally relevant framework grounded in Motivational Interviewing. Her research examines the complex interplay between health disparities, poor health outcomes, social support, and psychological stress to develop targeted interventions for traditionally underserved groups, including African Americans.  JaNiene loves spending quality time with family and friends, is always up for outdoor adventures, loves HGTV, is an Enneagram 7wing6, and wholeheartedly advocates for engagement in mindfulness practices. 

Daniela Tuda was born and raised in Miami, Florida but has called NYC her home for the past decade, earning her MSW from Columbia University. She has worked in community mental health utilizing various evidence-based therapeutic practices and interventions and gained experience a research assistant for various projects that aim to address the health disparities of racial and ethnic minorities living with serious mental illness. Daniela plans to pursue research interests related to community mental health and the adaptation of evidenced-based practices for marginalized communities. She enjoys traveling, cycling hiking, and best of all, a lazy Sunday evening watching a good TV show while cuddling with her cat, Olive. 

Haotian (Hao-T’ien) Zheng was born and raised in China and earned his MSW from the University of Michigan. During and after graduate studies, he worked as a research assistant studying children savings accounts (CSAs) at the Center on Assets, Education, and Inclusion (AEDI) at the University of Michigan School of Social Work. His research interest focuses on the effect of assets across the lifespan, particularly among children and youth and older adults. Haotian enjoys playing soccer and boxing. 

New Students in Public Health Sciences

Amanda Gilbert is originally from Colorado and has lived in Boston, New York and Atlanta. Amanda’s research focuses on chronic disease prevention, physical activity, and nutrition. Specifically, Amanda is interested in understanding health behavior change across the life-course and the ways in which the built environment influences health behaviors. She worked for several years as an oncology social worker at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York before pursuing graduate work. A licensed clinical social worker, Amanda earned her MPH at Washington University in St. Louis, and her MSW from New York University. Amanda loves reading, baking, and traveling.

Joshua Kiyingi was born and raised in Uganda, East Africa and earned an MS in Statistics from Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda. He coordinated two NIMH-funded multisite studies in Uganda after graduation: the Kyaterekera Study, which is a combination intervention addressing sexual risk-taking behaviors among vulnerable women in Uganda; and SMART Africa – Uganda, aimed at reducing gaps in child and adolescent mental health services and research in SSA through a population approach to child mental health under the International Center for Child Health and Development (ICHAD). His research interests include global, maternal and child health. Joshua enjoys travelling and listening to music.

F. Hunter McGuire was born and raised in Marion, North Carolina. He earned an MPH in Health Behavior from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. For two years, he was a research assistant at the Duke Clinical Research Institute where he worked with the Clinical Trials Transformation Initiative on projects to related to patient/stakeholder engagement in clinical research and research on the quality and ethical conduct of clinical trials. During his MPH program, he worked on health equity research in a variety of issue areas, including HIV/AIDS, cervical cancer, liver disease, and gender-affirming health care. His current research interests center on health equity for LGBTQ people with a focus on mental health, eating disorders, and body image issues. Hunter is a semi-professional singer and has traveled internationally on choir tours of England, Norway, and Sweden. 

Nicole Strombom hails from California and recently earned both a JD and MPH from Saint Louis University (SLU). While pursuing her degrees, she interned with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, ACLU of Missouri, the National Health Law Program (NHeLP), and Legal Services of Eastern Missouri’s Medical Legal Partnership. During her studies, Nicole served as project administrator for a funded project that evaluated if cities and counties are ready to utilize equity tools to influence policy. Her research interests include health care disparities, health equity, women’s health, and maternal health issues. Nicole likes to sew, brew beer, play board games, and travel. She also holds a special place in her heart for corgis. 

Luissa Vahedi is a Canadian who earned her master’s degree in Epidemiology at Queen’s University. Her research interest is sexual and reproductive health and rights in humanitarian settings. Luissa is interested in conducting interdisciplinary research that integrates the methods and frameworks of epidemiology to the study of gender-based violence and sexual/reproductive health in humanitarian settings, characterized by conflict and displacement. She hopes to build a career narrowing the gap between research and policy. For Luissa, coffee is not just a drink but a lifestyle, philosophy and currency. 

Jordyn Wartts spent ten years in upstate New York before returning to her hometown of St. Louis, MO. She earned her MPH at SUNY Albany. Although her interests are vast, Jordyn is most passionate about decreasing minority health disparities in pursuit of equitable health outcomes in populations of color. Her current research interests include health priorities and communications in Black populations. Jordyn has worked with St. Louis Children’s Hospital/Washington University’s School of Medicine, multiple primary care groups in upstate New York, the Research Foundation of SUNY Albany, and the New York State Department of Health. Jordyn played (and coached) college basketball and now spends her extra energy rollerblading, cooking, boxing, and exploring the intricacies of web design.

The coronavirus pandemic has brought a number of challenges to schools, which were forced to close in the spring to help slow the spread of infection. One major challenge for schools was ensuring that students’ nutritional supplementation needs were met when they were not attending school in person.

As schools across the country begin to welcome students back in person or for virtual learning, equity must be at the forefront of decisions pertaining to school emergency food services, finds a new study from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

“Ensuring access to food during these critical times is of paramount importance to meeting the public health needs of vulnerable populations at greatest risk for food security. Further, as schools contemplate re-opening plans, a greater emphasis should be placed on ways to maintain practices developed over the closure period, protecting access to supplemental nutrition,” said Gabriella McLoughlin, postdoctoral research associate at the Brown School’s Prevention Research Center.

McLoughlin is lead author of the paper “Addressing Food Insecurity Through a Health Equity Lens: A Case Study of Large Urban School Districts During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” published in the August edition of the Journal of Urban Health.

McLoughlin and her co-authors conducted a mixed-methods study evaluating emergency meal distribution and strategy implementation from March to May in four large urban school districts: Chicago Public Schools, Houston Independent School District, Los Angeles Unified School District and New York City Department of Education.

“We found that these four urban districts took distinctive steps to enhancing participation in emergency feeding programs through a health equity lens,” McLoughlin said. “However, given the significantly lower than typical participation rates observed in each district, we present key ways that this could be mitigated by focusing on equity as a key priority. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology and document analysis highlighted some gaps in reach and potential ways that they can increase participation in emergency meal programs.”

Federal nutrition assistance programs like the School Breakfast Program (SBP) and National School Lunch Program (NSLP) help to address child food insecurity and improve access to healthy foods, McLoughlin said.

“Nearly 30 million students participate in SBP and NSLP daily, and 85% of SBP and 71% of NSLP participants receive free or reduced-price meals based on household income, meaning their families do not have adequate means to purchase food absent safety net programs,” she said. “For many students, school meals make up one-third to one-half of their caloric intake in a day.”

“Given the detrimental impact of COVID-19 on the economic landscape of the U.S. and subsequent surge in food insecurity prevalence, continuation of meal sites that serve meals to students and families may serve as a vital strategy to offset ongoing depravity,” McLoughlin and her co-authors wrote. “This will be especially important for families/children at a greater risk for contracting COVID-19 who wish to remain at home and/or for parents who still cannot return to work through job loss or ongoing furlough.

“Further, depending on the school schedule and whether schools opt for a rotation system — minimizing attendance and asking students to be at school on certain days of the week — operating walk-up and drive-up meal sites would facilitate equitable access to supplemental nutrition despite students not attending schools full time. Continuation of various waivers granted by the USDA may therefore be necessary to combat rising food insecurity rates and ease the transition of going back to school amid the pandemic.”

The authors of the study are members of the COVID-19 School Nutrition Implications Working Group, jointly supported by Healthy Eating Research, a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Nutrition and Obesity Policy Research and Evaluation Network.

Washington University in St. Louis’ new Equity and Inclusion Council (WUEIC) recently unveiled its structure and mission, along with an invitation to those interested in serving as members.

Part of Chancellor Andrew D. Martin’s action steps toward ensuring Washington University addresses racial equity and justice in the same manner as it approaches research or patient care, the council will consist of staff, faculty and students.

“We want this work to last,” said Nicole Hudson, assistant vice chancellor of the Academy for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. “We do not want to be reactive. We are trying to balance the urgency and opportunity for change with wanting something that can meet the institution where it is and drive it forward.”

While the council is new, the examination of  — and commitment to — diversity and inclusion at Washington University is not. In 2015, after months of campus activism sparked by the death of Michael Brown Jr. in Ferguson, Mo., the Commission on Diversity and Inclusion was formed to create a universitywide plan to support and uphold diversity. Its report, which represented more than two years of work undertaken by more than 230 faculty members, staff and students, made hundreds of recommendations.

WUEIC’s main charges include facilitating the implementation of recommendations made in that 2017 report; providing a standing institutional home for that work; generating recommendations to further campus culture and climate; and reporting back to the university community on progress.

Several Brown School community members currently serve on the council:

“It is important that we are taking this next step in our campus commitment to equity for all,” said Adrienne Davis, vice provost, the William M. Van Cleve Professor of Law and founding director of the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity & Equity. Davis was chair of the Commission on Diversity and Inclusion. “Not only will the council help uphold the recommendations made three years ago, it will also directly address systems and structures that keep us in the past and do not support our values.”

While WUEIC’s work is urgent given the current moment in our nation’s history, it’s designed to be sustainable and evolving. The council, and its four initial working groups, will meet several times throughout the fall semester to assess the university’s current diversity and inclusion landscape, and it plans to deliver an initial report to Martin, the Board of Trustees and the university community in December. The Academy for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion will administer the new council.

“We have different challenges depending on where we are at the university,” Hudson said. “Having a place where we can grapple with that, and move from demand and response to collective innovation, is our goal.”

Those interested in learning more about the council, joining it, or nominating a colleague for it, should visit the university’s diversity website.

A recent study from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis provides the first explicit analysis of the timing, determinants and impacts of mitigation interventions for all states and Washington, D.C., during the first five weeks of the pandemic.

States initially with high prevalence rates of COVID-19 enacted mitigation interventions, like social distancing, in a delayed fashion, which explained why the U.S case/death counts of the virus remained high for a long period.

“Because there is no preventive vaccine and because there are few potentially effective treatments, recent reductions in new cases and deaths must be due, in large part, to the social interventions delivered by states. Our study suggests that the policy of reopening the economy needs to be implemented carefully,” said Shenyang Guo, the Frank J. Bruno Distinguished Professor of Social Work Research.

Guo is lead author of the study “Social Distancing Interventions in the United States: An Exploratory Investigation of Determinants and Impacts,” which is available online and will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Research on Social Work Practice.

Through an impact analysis, the researchers explored the effects of the interventions and the potential risks of removing them under the context of reopening the economy.

“Unlike other studies that evaluated the stay-at-home order by using simulated data, our study employed the real data of various case counts of COVID-19,” Guo said.

The study revealed two main findings:

The study also found evidence that vulnerable populations — minorities, poor and unemployed people — have suffered most severely from the pandemic, “which helps to emphasize the significant resurgence in the Black Lives Matter and anti-racism movements,” Guo said.

Brown School co-authors on the study are: Ruopeng An, assistant professor; Timothy McBride, the Bernard Becker Professor; Linyun Fu, manager of global programs; and Yuanyuan Yang, a doctoral student; along with Danlin Yu, professor at Montclair State University.

Across 30 major U.S. cities, an average of 63% of public schools are located within 1,000 feet — about two city blocks — of a store selling tobacco and e-cigarette products, according to a comprehensive new study mapping tobacco retailers.

The study was conducted by researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine, along with those from Washington University in St. Louis and the University of North Carolina, members of the ASPiRE Center.

Key findings of the study include:

Funded by the National Cancer Institute, the research was conducted by the Advancing Science and Practice in the Retail Environment (ASPiRE) Center, a collaborative that investigates how tobacco retailer density and innovative retail tobacco interventions impact people and communities.

The center launched in 2018 with a five-year $11.6 million grant from the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health to a partnership made up of Washington University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Stanford University.

The center’s goal is to build a strong base of scientific evidence for effective retail policies to reduce tobacco use, tobacco-related disparities and the public health burden of tobacco.

Using a wide range of data from state and local governments and other sources, the researchers mapped retailers that sell cigarettes, e-cigarettes and other tobacco products in 30 large cities across the United States, providing the most comprehensive study to date showing the ubiquity of tobacco retailers and their proximity to schools.

Douglas Luke, professor at Washington University’s Brown School, and his team help to translate, communicate and disseminate evidence from the ASPiRE research projects for tobacco control practitioners. The team translated the findings from this study into user-friendly, tailored fact sheets for the 30 cities. Washington University’s Ross Brownson, the Steven H. and Susan U. Lipstein Distinguished Professor, is co-lead on the dissemination effort.

Luke, who co-leads the Tobacco Town project, is director of the Center for Public Health Systems Science. He is a leading researcher in public health policy, systems science and tobacco control. He directs work focused primarily on the evaluation, dissemination and implementation of evidence-based public health policies.

Approximately 29 million adults and 8 million children (1 in 9 U.S. residents) live in these 30 cities, from Atlanta to Washington, D.C. St. Louis wasn’t included in the study, but Kansas City was.

This study adds to previous research showing that the tobacco industry has targeted low-income and minority neighborhoods. In particular, the industry has long targeted Blacks with marketing for menthol cigarettes, with a wealth of research showing that Black communities have more tobacco retailers and tobacco marketing. Blacks die at higher rates than other groups from tobacco-related diseases such as cancer, heart disease and stroke.

According to the researchers, “Living in neighborhoods with a higher concentration of tobacco retailers makes youth more likely to start using tobacco and makes quitting more difficult. In addition, higher concentrations of tobacco retailers in disadvantaged neighborhoods contribute to health disparities.”

Tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable death in the U.S., resulting in over 480,000 deaths and $170 billion in health care expenses each year.

While the U.S. has greatly reduced cigarette smoking, youth use of e-cigarettes has skyrocketed in recent years. According to the 2019 National Youth Tobacco Survey, e-cigarette use among high school students nationwide more than doubled between 2017 and 2019 (from 11.7% to 27.5%), and over 5.3 million U.S. kids now use e-cigarettes. Research shows that 97% of current youth e-cigarette users tried a flavored product in the past month, and 80% of youth who had ever used tobacco started with a flavored product.