Brief reportCigarette Smoking Among Low-Income African Americans: A Serious Public Health Problem
Introduction
Considerable progress has been made toward reducing tobacco use in the United States, and recent trends show a continuous decline in prevalence.1 However, such positive trends mask the substantial burden of tobacco-related morbidity and mortality that persists among low income, less-educated, and underserved racial/ethnic minority populations.2, 3, 4, 5 In contrast to the recent decline in prevalence and incidence of cigarette use among younger populations and non–racial-ethnic minorities, cigarette use among low-income African Americans appears to remain high and unchanged when compared to earlier years.6, 78 This disparity is of great concern, as tobacco use is the single largest preventable cause of death and has a disproportionate impact on African Americans. In this article we provide estimates of current cigarette use among a large randomly selected community-based sample of low-income African-American men and women residing in the 39 poorest census tracts in Detroit, Michigan.
Section snippets
Study Sample
The study was conducted by the Detroit Center for Research on Oral Health Disparities, one of five Centers funded by the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research to reduce oral health disparities. The sample includes 1021 African-American men (n=55) and women (n=966) who are participating in a community-based randomized clinical trial (RCT) aimed at improving the oral health of African-American children and their primary caregivers. Overall, the response rate for the 1021 families
Results
The prevalence of current cigarette smoking for the entire sample was nearly 42%. For men it was 59.3%, and for women 41.0%, with adult and older participants having a significantly higher prevalence than those aged <21 years of age (Table 1). A significantly higher proportion of participants without a high school education smoked (50.7%) than those with a high school degree (33.5%) and those with some college education (36.7%). Older participants and those without a high school education
Discussion
The findings of this study point to what may be a more recent phenomenon, that African-American men and women may now be initiating cigarette use at a younger age. Recent studies suggest that while the prevalence of cigarette use among African-American youth remains lower than that of other groups, the incidence rate may have surpassed that of whites and other racial/ethnic groups.10 Given that tobacco companies have made it a priority to more aggressively market their products to African
Conclusion
Although the proportion of the general population that smokes cigarettes is decreasing, the findings presented here point to an important and disturbing disparity—the large proportion of low-income African-American men and women who currently smoke cigarettes, a phenomenon that seems quite stable. The present study highlights the urgent need for the public health field to pay greater attention to preventing and reducing cigarette smoking among vulnerable populations that do not appear to be
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