News
Omahan to study effects of ads on smokers
Thursday, January 16, 2014
Omaha World-Herald
An Omaha researcher hopes to assess the degree to which cigarette ads affect a person's smoking habits.
Mohammad Siahpush, a professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, has received a $1.4 million grant from the National Cancer Institute for the project.
Siahpush seeks 1,000 Omaha adult smokers to participate in the study, which will involve two telephone interviews. Participants will be paid $15 per interview.
Generally, Siahpush will examine how much cigarette advertising is found and what kind of ads are displayed in stores in the neighborhoods of those who were surveyed. About six months after the first interview, interviewers will contact the subjects again to ask about their cravings, if they have quit smoking or have tried and failed. Seventy percent of smokers want to quit, he said.
He suspects participants are more likely to fail in neighborhoods that are heavy with ads.
Cigarette ads on billboards, television and some other places have been banned by the federal government. Increasingly, ads are found in the retail stores that sell cigarettes, he said. Some 450 do business in Omaha, he said.
Siahpush, who has a doctorate in sociology and is in the UNMC College of Public Health, is the principal researcher on the two-year project. He will be assisted with surveys, data collection and other tasks by the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, N.Y.
Siahpush, 51, understands the appeal of smoking. He smoked a long time himself.
“I started when I was 12,” he said. He quit when he was 25, resumed a year later and finally beat the habit at 30. “So it was sort of a battle.”
He doesn't recall whether ads influenced him. Drinking seemed to feed his smoking habit, he said.
