Breathing Easier in the Heart of Tobacco Country: Cutting Tobacco Use Disparities

BREATHE (Bridging Research Efforts and Advocacy Toward Healthy Environments) - University of Kentucky, College of Nursing

BREATHE promotes lung health and healthy environments to achieve health equity. Cross-discipline scientists and community partners collaborate to develop and test creative, evidence-based solutions to prevent tobacco-related diseases and overcome population health barriers in a challenging pro-tobacco climate.

Our community-engaged tobacco policy work promotes smoke-free laws and tobacco-free policies. We designed and tested policy advocacy interventions to promote smoke-free laws in rural communities and increase adherence to tobacco-free campus policies. We engage rural Appalachian youth and their adult mentors in policy advocacy. We have published multiple policy outcome studies showing that strong smoke-free workplace laws improve air quality and worker health, and reduce hospitalizations for asthma and COPD, heart attacks, and new cases of lung cancer.

Our tobacco prevention and treatment work produced the first and only online tobacco treatment specialist training program in the world. We work with special populations to reduce tobacco use disparities: substance abusing women, persons living with mental illness, pregnant women, and LGBT groups. One novel program engages substance-abusing women in Get Fit and Quit to stop smoking. Our innovative radon policy work highlights the synergistic risks for lung cancer: breathing radon is dangerous but it is more harmful when you also breathe tobacco smoke.