Publications by authors named "Bridget Ahrens"
Objectives: Despite the proven benefits of immunizations, coverage remains low in many states, including Vermont. This study measured the impact of a quality improvement (QI) project on immunization coverage in childhood, school-age, and adolescent groups.
Methods: In 2013, a total of 20 primary care practices completed a 7-month QI project aimed to increase immunization coverage among early childhood (29-33 months), school-age (6 years), and adolescent (13 years) age groups.
Background: Exposure to smoking in movies has been linked with adolescent smoking initiation in cross-sectional studies. We undertook a prospective study to ascertain whether exposure to smoking in movies predicts smoking initiation.
Method: We assessed exposure to smoking shown in movies in 3547 adolescents, aged 10-14 years, who reported in a baseline survey that they had never tried smoking.
Purpose: To determine exposure of young adolescents to extremely violent movies.
Design: Cross-sectional school-based survey of middle school students at 15 randomly selected New Hampshire and Vermont middle schools. Each survey contained a unique list of 50 movies, randomly selected from 603 top box office hits from 1988 to 1999, 51 of which were determined by content analysis to contain extremely violent material.
Objective: The aim of this study was to describe tobacco use in a large representative sample of movies.
Methods: We analyzed the content of the top 25 box office hits per year from 1988 to 1997. Outcomes included the number of occurrences of tobacco use, the time tobacco use appeared on screen, the context in which tobacco use was portrayed, and characteristics of smokers compared with nonsmokers.
Background: Social cognitive theory posits that children develop intentions and positive expectations (utilities) about smoking prior to initiation. These attitudes and values result, in part, from observing others modeling the behavior. This study examines, for the first time, the association between viewing tobacco use in movies and attitudes toward smoking among children who have never smoked a cigarette.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFContext: Viewing smoking and drinking in movies may prompt adolescents to initiate these behaviors. Movies with R ratings contain more smoking than do movies in all other rating categories.
Objective: To evaluate the extent to which parents restrict the exposure of adolescents to R-rated movies and to determine whether such restrictions are associated with decreased tobacco and alcohol use in adolescents.