Development of a computational modeling laboratory for examining tobacco control policies: Tobacco Town.

A key focus of recent policy efforts to curb tobacco product usage has been the role of place-specifically the density of retail and advertising and the resulting spatial pattern of access and exposure for consumers. Policies can alter the environment by reducing density or shifting distribution of tobacco retail and thus limiting access and exposure. Since little empirical evidence exists for the potential impact of these policies across potentially heterogeneous places, we develop and apply an original spatial computational model to simulate place-based retail tobacco control policies.

Prevalence of cigarette advertising and other promotional strategies at the point of sale in St Louis, Missouri: analysis by store type and distance from a school.

Introduction: Point-of-sale advertising provides an opportunity for the tobacco industry to communicate with current and potential smokers. The US Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act allows states to implement policies requiring that tobacco products be placed out of sight, and the Food and Drug Administration is considering banning point-of-sale advertising within 1,000 feet of schools. Our objective was to compare cigarette point-of-sale advertising near schools with grades prekindergarten through 12 and by store type.

Disparities and menthol marketing: additional evidence in support of point of sale policies.

This study examined factors associated with point-of-sale tobacco marketing in St. Louis, an urban city in the United States. Using spatial analysis, descriptive statistics, and multilevel modeling, we examined point-of-sale data and the proportion of mentholated cigarette and total cigarette marketing from 342 individual tobacco retail stores within St.

Social media adoption in local health departments nationwide.

Objectives: We examined whether characteristics of local health departments (LHD) and their geographic region were associated with using Facebook and Twitter. We also examined the number of tweets per month for Twitter accounts as an indicator of social media use by LHDs.

Methods: In 2012, we searched for Facebook and Twitter accounts for 2565 LHDs nationwide, and collected adoption date and number of connections for each account.

Local health department use of twitter to disseminate diabetes information, United States.

Introduction: Diabetes may affect one-third of US adults by 2050. Adopting a healthful diet and increasing physical activity are effective in preventing type 2 diabetes and decreasing the severity of diabetes-related complications. Educating and informing the public about health problems is a service provided by local health departments (LHDs).