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Biomedical subjects

E M Barbeau

Publications and source records attributed to E M Barbeau.

11 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2005

From strange bedfellows to natural allies: the shifting allegiance of fire service organisations in the push for federal fire-safe cigarette legislation.

BACKGROUND: Cigarettes are the leading cause of fatal fires in the USA and are associated with one in four fire deaths. Although the technology needed to make fire-safe cigarettes has been available for many years, progress has been slow on legislative and regulatory fronts to require the tobacco industry to manufacture fire-safe cigarettes. METHOD AND RESULTS: We conducted a case study, drawing on data from tobacco industry documents, archives, and key informant interviews to investigate tobacco industry strategies for thwarting fire-safe cigarette legislation in the US Congress. We apply a theoretical framework that posits that policymaking is the product of three sets of forces: interests, institutions, and ideas, to examine tobacco industry behaviour, with a special focus on their and others' attempts to court fire service organisations, including firefighters' unions as allies. We discuss the implications of our findings for future policy efforts related to fire-safe cigarettes and other tobacco control issues. CONCLUSIONS: Tobacco control advocates ought to: continue efforts to align key interest groups, including the firefighters unions; contest tobacco industry "diversionary" science tactics; and pursue a state based legislative strategy for fire-safe cigarettes, building towards national legislation.

Consumer Product Safety↗
PubMed2004

Smoking, social class, and gender: what can public health learn from the tobacco industry about disparities in smoking?

OBJECTIVE: To discover how the tobacco industry considers social class and gender in its efforts to market cigarettes in the USA, particularly to socially disadvantaged young women. METHODS: A systematic on-line search of tobacco industry documents using selected keywords was conducted, and epidemiological data on smoking rates reviewed. RESULTS: The two largest cigarette manufacturers in the USA consider "working class" young adults to be a critical market segment to promote growth of key brands. Through their own market research, these companies discovered that socially disadvantaged young women do not necessarily desire a "feminine" cigarette brand. CONCLUSIONS: Considering the tobacco industry's efforts, alongside the persistent and growing disparities in cigarette smoking by social class, and the narrowing of differences in smoking by gender, it is concluded that additional tobacco control resources ought to be directed toward working class women.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2002

Tobacco industry documents: comparing the Minnesota Depository and internet access.

OBJECTIVE: To assess the comparability of searches conducted on two publicly available tobacco industry document collections: hard copies housed and maintained by a neutral party in the Minnesota Depository and electronic copies available through tobacco industry maintained websites. METHODS: We conducted a set of searches in Minnesota and then conducted the same searches using the industry websites. We matched documents by Bates number, weeded out duplicates, and coded documents that were unique to either collection as major, minor, or trivial. RESULTS: Among hundreds of documents produced by several searches, we found only four unique major documents in the Minnesota Depository. By contrast, we found 62 unique major documents using the websites. CONCLUSION: These results suggest that researchers can rely on industry websites while waiting for improved access resulting from searching, indexing, and document storage administered by the tobacco control community. Searching the tobacco industry websites is at least as good as searching in Minnesota and may in some instances actually be better. Four smaller subcollections, however, can only be searched by hand in Minnesota.

Databases, Factual↗
PubMed2001

The work environment impact assessment: a methodologic framework for evaluating health-based interventions.

BACKGROUND: A new conceptual framework is needed to evaluate health-based interventions based on the premise that like the environment, workplaces are complex ecologies. The proposed Work Environment Impact Assessment (WEIA) is analogous to Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), a concept and method developed 30 years ago in the environmental policy arena to evaluate potential consequences of human activity for the natural environment. WEIA entails identifying and evaluating both intended and unintended consequences, or outcomes, associated with a particular intervention. Because the workplace is a complex ecology, changes in one aspect may lead to changes in other aspects. WEIA calls for a systematic and comprehensive approach to the total work environment. METHODS: To illustrate the utility of WEIA we use this approach to evaluate an intervention to reduce the public's exposure to the pesticide Alar, which had been used on apples until it was withdrawn from the market in 1989. RESULTS: While this intervention did indeed reduce the public's exposure to Alar, it also led to other unintended consequences, namely new ergonomic hazards for apple pickers, increased stress levels in the orchards for both pickers and growers, as well as new worker, and perhaps public, exposure to potent neurotoxins. CONCLUSIONS: The goal of using WEIA is not to engage in a risk-risk debate that stalls worthwhile interventions. Rather, we propose that by conducting a Work Environment Impact Assessment, all possible positive and negative "ripple" effects stemming from an intervention can be considered, so that the intervention can be designed to achieve maximum benefit.

Adult↗
PubMed2001

Coverage of smoking cessation treatment by union health and welfare funds.

OBJECTIVES: This study determined the level of insurance coverage for smoking cessation treatment and factors associated with coverage among health and welfare funds affiliated with a large labor union. METHODS: A self-administered written survey was mailed to fund and union officials. Analyses were conducted by chi2 tests. RESULTS: Twenty-nine percent of funds provided coverage for some type of smoking cessation treatment, with the odds of coverage significantly increased among funds whose administrators reported having received members' requests for smoking cessation treatment in the past year (odds ratio = 4.9, P = .05). CONCLUSIONS: Coverage for smoking cessation services is low, comparable to coverage offered by other health insurers. Interventions with union members and fund officials are needed to provide union members with access to affordable and effective smoking cessation treatments.

Administrative Personnel↗
PubMed2000

A bittersweet report from a New Orleans sugar refinery: working conditions and labor-management relations deteriorate together.

At the invitation of the president of United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local #1101, which represents workers at the Domino sugar refinery in Arabi, Louisiana, we met with several union members in the fall of 1998. Our purpose was to investigate workers perceptions of health and safety conditions in the plant and offer assistance in the amelioration of problems. We conducted in-person interviews, each lasting approximately 30 minutes, with the local union president and twelve members selected by the president.

Journal Article↗
PubMed1999

Feeling the heat: displaced tobacco workers in North Carolina.

Tobacco control is a successful public health movement, but little attention is being paid to what this success means for workers and communities who are economically dependent on tobacco. The social context of job loss for these workers remains largely unstudied. We conducted a case study of a cigarette manufacturing facility closure in Reidsville, North Carolina and report on the effects of the closure for workers and the community. Results suggest the need for: 1) worker education directed toward developing skills for jobs that pay family-supporting wages, and 2) community-driven strategies to attract new businesses that offer such jobs. Public health organizations, labor unions, community development groups, business representatives, civic leaders, academic institutions, and others should unite in efforts to assist tobacco-dependent workers and communities to transition to other economic bases. These efforts should be funded by the tobacco industry.

Journal Article↗
PubMed1998

Does cigarette print advertising adhere to the Tobacco Institute's voluntary advertising and promotion code? An assessment.

OBJECTIVES: This investigation examined whether, despite the Tobacco Institute's Voluntary Cigarette Advertising and Promotion Code, current cigarette print advertising communicates culturally positive messages to youth about smoking. METHODS: Nine hundred thirteen students in grades 6-8 (ages 10-15) were shown a sample of four contemporary cigarette print ads (Camel, Marlboro, Newport, and Virginia Slims) and completed structured written assessments designed to capture their perceptions of each ad. RESULTS: Across the four ads, between 37% and 84% of the students reported that the ads communicated to them that smoking will make people popular, cool, successful in life, sexy, attractive, and healthy. Sizeable percentages of students reported that the ads show people using the product in an "exaggerated" way, and that what people in the ads are doing requires "exercise and physical energy." The median estimated age of the models in the ads was under age 25 for four out of the six models. CONCLUSIONS: As perceived by adolescents, current cigarette print advertising violates basic tenets of the Voluntary Code, thus bringing into question the tobacco industry's ability to self-regulate image advertising. These findings suggest that the FDA ruling to prohibit image advertising for tobacco in publications with significant youth readership deserves serious consideration.

Adolescent↗