SDSU School of Public Health recently had several students present their research at the SRNT Conference

Congratulations to all of our students that had the opportunity to present their work and research at the SRNT Conference! The SRNT Conference is a national conference which focuses on nicotine and tobacco research and the SDSU School of Public Health recently had several students present their research at this year’s event in New Orleans. 

Lara Berghammer presented her research poster, “Self-Reported Use and Reasons of CBD: Vaping and Smoking among a Representative Sample of US Adults.” Her research focuses on exploring “the need and policy implications for supporting safe, effective treatment options for trauma survivors facing PTSD, depression, chronic pain, and addiction.” Lara enjoyed that “the conference highlighted the importance for continued funding within the space to support the ongoing evolution at the intersection of policy and research to inform consumers”. The conference also helped to continue a growing interest in research that focuses on the growing market for synthetic inhalable products. She plans to continue doing research with a focus on psychedelic use among veterans. 

Linda Salgin gave two presentations at the SRNT Conference. The first was titled, “Individual and Organizational Factors Associated with Tobacco Cessation Counseling Among Patients within a Federally Qualified Health Center,” which focused on examining relationships “between patients' medical complexity and receipt of tobacco cessation counseling, and explored associations between sociodemographic and organizational factors and receipt of tobacco cessation counseling within a federally qualified health center.” The second presentation represented Linda’s work within the ARCHES lab under Dr. Jerel Calzo, and was titled “Acceptability, Appropriateness, and Feasibility and Acceptability of Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) Methods among LGBTQ+ Adolescents Who Use Tobacco and Nicotine.” The purpose of this research was to report “the acceptability and feasibility of real-time ecological momentary assessment, measurement of minority stress, smoking socialization, and smoking behaviors” among a group of participants aged 14 -19.

Linda enjoyed the focus on community engaged work and learning about innovative co-design methods at the conference. Up next in her research, Linda hopes to “inform quality improvement projects that can be implemented within federally qualified health centers that are interested and seeking to improve their tobacco screening and counseling rates” and overall to extend her methods to be used beyond tobacco to improve quality patient care. 

Alana Lopez presented “Lessons learned from youth engagement during community-academic partnered formative research: Addressing tobacco-related inequities for youth experiencing homelessness in San Diego County, CA” alongside fellow student and collaborator Andy Lim. Alana and Andy received the award of Health Equity Network Highlighted Poster. This research presentation was focused on what has been learned from working with youth collaborators with the ultimate goal of creating “an intervention to help youth experiencing housing insecurity have a healthier relationship with tobacco and cannabis, including reducing their use.” Alana hopes that their research is helpful to future collaborators and researchers that want to work with youth, including those who have experienced housing insecurities.  Alana learned from this conference that studying the intersection of tobacco and cannabis use is on the rise. Next for Alana is completing her dissertation, which includes continued work on this project and completing a paper that is focused on creating a program with youth partners and its challenges, as well as another paper that is focused on how their program is received and works for different language and ethnic groups. 

Giovanni Appolon presented, “Evaluation of California Tobacco Control Policies and Their Influence on ENDS Use Among Youth.” This project focused on “how local tobacco control policies in California impact electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) use among youth,” and was supported by the Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program (TRDRP) Pre-Doctoral Award. Giovanni hopes for his research to “inform the development of more equitable and effective public health policies that improve health outcomes for all communities.” From the conference, Giovanni connected with many tobacco control scholars and public health professionals and learned about different methodological approaches. It also helped Giovanni affirm “the importance of continuing to push for equity in public health for people of all backgrounds, especially those who have been historically underserved or marginalized.” Giovannni’s future goals are to “help policymakers consider equity more explicitly when crafting and implementing tobacco control policies that aim to improve health outcomes for all communities.”