Licensing Retail Tobacco Outlets to Reduce Youth Access to Tobacco Products in Virginia
Tobacco retail licensing (TRL) is recommended as an effective policy to reduce youth tobacco use. A study was conducted by George Mason University and Virginia Commonwealth University to review policies nationwide and create an overview document to assist in educating policy makers and the public in Virginia about this important issue.
Grant Award Amount: $449,929
Principal Investigators: Rosalie Corona, Ph.D., Professor and Director of Clinical Training, Department of Psychology
Collaborating Partner: The College of William & Mary, Virginia Tech
This project will address a local service need by culturally enhancing an evidence-based tobacco prevention intervention and determining the pilot efficacy of the culturally enhanced intervention. The research team will implement a Motivational Interviewing (Group Motivational Interviewing for Teens, GMIT) with Latinx adolescents. GMIT, like many other evidence-based substance-use prevention programs, does not address the risks of alternative tobacco products (ATPs). They will also integrate the VFHY module on ATPs into GMIT to create a more comprehensive tobacco-use prevention program (GMIT-ATP). Next the team will integrate a parenting component to the GMIT-ATP intervention (GMIT-ATP+P) and linguistically translate the interventions and address other surface level adaptations. Finally, the project team will conduct a pilot randomized-controlled trial to obtain preliminary efficacy data by comparing GMIT-ATP+P to GMIT-ATP on Latinx adolescents’ tobacco use outcomes.
Grant Award Amount: $450,000
Principal Investigator: Elizabeth Do, Ph.D., MPH Instructor, Department of Health Behavior & Policy, School of Medicine
Collaborating Partners: Research Unlimited LLC, Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services
To advance tobacco retail regulation policies in Virginia, data are needed to better characterize the tobacco retail landscape, how it changes with local and federal regulations, and how the landscape may influence the initiation of cigarette, e-cigarette, and dual use among youth. To address these points, the aims of this study are three-fold. First, the research team will characterize the existing tobacco landscape within Virginia using geospatial analyses, which is necessary for determining which areas/populations of Virginia are the most vulnerable, in terms of tobacco retail outlet (TRO) and vape shop outlet (VSO) exposure. Second, determine how local and federal regulations might affect TRO/VSO retail density. This is important to guide evidence-based policy initiatives that have the potential to reduce tobacco and e-cigarette use within the community, particularly among youth. Third, the research team will evaluate the association that TRO/VSO density, in and around areas frequented by youth, have on risk for cigarette, e-cigarette, and dual use among Virginia youth ages 11-15 years. Successful completion of this project will provide a comprehensive understanding of how various policies at the local and federal level impact TRO/VSO density within neighborhoods across Virginia and provide evidence determining to what effect TRO/VSO relate to cigarette, e-cigarette, and dual use among Virginia youth. Further, results from this study will help inform community-level policies targeting tobacco and e-cigarette use in youth via regulation of TRO/VSO density within the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Grant Award Amount: $449,356
Principal Investigator: Sunny Shin, Ph.D., Associate Professor, School of Social Work and School of Medicine Department of Psychiatry
Collaborating Partners: Virginia Department of Social Services, Virginia Homes for Boys and Girls, UMFS
The goal of the study is to evaluate the feasibility of adapting and implementing an evidence-based, personality-targeted, youth substance abuse prevention program called Preventure for adolescents who have adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). Exposure to ACEs, such as childhood exposure to maltreatment and household dysfunction, increases the risk of tobacco use during adolescence. ACEs is also associated with early onset of tobacco use and nicotine dependence in adulthood. Although increased vulnerability to tobacco use among youth with a history of ACEs is well documented, few tobacco prevention programs are available for this highly vulnerable population. The project is unique in that it is designed to modify and implement an evidence-based tobacco prevention program in the central region of Virginia with the long-term goal of disseminating the newly adapted preventive intervention throughout the state. This study will generate valuable knowledge about adaptations, barriers, and enablers to effective implementation of the youth tobacco prevention intervention in out-of-home care settings (e.g., family foster care, kinship care, treatment foster care, and residential and group care), and also test the efficacy of the preventive intervention with a population of youth known to be at risk for the eventual development of tobacco use.
Grant Award Amount: $450,000
Principal Investigator: J. Randy Koch, Ph.D., Center for Center for the Study of Tobacco Products
Collaborating Partners: The College of William & Mary, Eastern Virginia Medical School, George Mason University, James Madison University, Old Dominion University, Virginia Tech, University of Virginia, Virginia State University
The grant for the Virginia Youth Tobacco Projects (VYTP) includes the coordination and planning of the annual VYTP Research Coalition meetings, the Small Grants Program, a report summarizing and integrating VFHY-sponsored research and the triennial Research to Practice Conference. VYTP also facilitates the networking of VYTP researchers across Virginia.