Children exposed to tobacco smoke use more emergent health services

“Despite major progress in tobacco control, about four in ten children remain exposed to tobacco smoke. This exposure places developing children at higher risk for many health problems, including respiratory illnesses such as asthma, bronchiolitis and pneumonia,” says health services researcher and lead author Ashley Merianos, an associate professor of health promotion and education in UC’s School of Human Services.

Merianos is also a research affiliate member of Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, the Thirdhand Smoke Research Consortium and the American Academy of Pediatrics Tobacco Consortium. 

The study, Merianos says, also lends insight into preventions such as standardizing and initiating tobacco smoke exposure reduction interventions in the urgent care, emergency and inpatient settings and promoting voluntary smoke-free home and car policies to help reduce children’s tobacco smoke exposure and related consequences.

“If every health care provider were to use each pediatric visit as an opportunity to screen and advise parents who smoke or vape to counsel parents about the dangers of secondhand and thirdhand smoke exposure to their children, rates of pediatric tobacco smoke exposure would decline,” says pediatric emergency physician and senior author Melinda Mahabee-Gittens, a professor of pediatrics at Cincinnati Children’s.  

This work was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse; Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development; and the National Cancer Institute.

Study co-authors include: Roman Jandarov, Michael Lyons and Melinda Mahabee-Gittens at the UC College of Medicine and Judith Gordon, at the University of Arizona College of Nursing.  

The authors cite no conflict of interest.

Featured image at top: Nasif Al Sadman/Unsplash.