|
|
ABOUT PR TTAURC
|
Every year, more than 400,000 people in the U.S. and nearly 800,000 people in China
die from smoking-related diseases, while millions more suffer the effects
of alcohol abuse or alcoholism.
The Pacific
Rim Transdisciplinary
Tobacco & Alcohol Use Research
Center engages in
research in both countries. It focuses on the nations’ culturally
diverse youth as it examines genetic, environmental, social, and cultural
factors influencing tobacco and alcohol use behavior in order to develop
more effective prevention programs.
|
PR TTAURC at the Institute
for Health
Promotion & Disease
Prevention Research
|
A collaborative effort, the center joins the University of Southern
California with research partners SRI International, a
non-profit research institute in Menlo Park, California; and the municipal Centers for Disease
Control in three of China’s
largest cities: Chengdu,
Qingdao, and Wuhan.
PR TTAURC’s specific aims are to
investigate the efficacy of tobacco and alcohol use prevention programs (1)
across cultures, (2) within specific cultural and environmental contexts, and
(3) among individuals, explicitly examining the role of genetics across these
three areas.
Genetic studies that fail to properly account for the
environmental, social, and cultural contexts in which tobacco and alcohol use
behaviors occur will likely be unsuccessful in identifying and characterizing
genes.
Likewise, studies that focus solely on identifying prominent
non-genetic factors such as knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and social norms
in such behaviors may reach incorrect conclusions if they do not consider
individual differences such as genetic factors.
Insight into malleable environmental, social, and cultural
risk factors provides strong targets for public health intervention at the
population level. Understanding the genetic contribution to these
factors, however, is imperative in uncovering the underlying etiology at the
individual level.
In addition, a population-level public health intervention
that appears to have weak effects overall might
indeed have strong effects among a subgroup of the population. It is
important, therefore, to investigate individual differences in responsiveness
to prevention programs.
In pursuing this research, PR TTAURC fosters the
integration of theories and methods from various disciplines, thereby
bridging their unique perspectives to create innovative ways of tackling
complex research questions.
Among the disciplines represented by our researchers are
social, experimental, clinical, and health psychology; genetic and molecular
epidemiology; neurogenetics; quantitative genetics;
psychometrics; education; communication; health behavior; statistics;
nutritional epidemiology; public health; medicine; sociology; and health
policy.
CHINA
SEVEN CITIES STUDY
Much of PR TTAURC’s work is done
in concert with the China Seven Cities
Study, an ambitious longitudinal investigation of tobacco use and
lifestyles in seven of China’s
most populace urban areas: Harbin and Shenyang in the northeast, Wuhan in central China, Chengdu
and Kunming in the
southwest, and Hangzhou
and Qingdao
in the coast regions.
Dr. C. Anderson Johnson, director and principal
investigator of PR TTAURC, is the principal investigator of CSCS, a
consortium consisting of the Institute for Health Promotion & Disease
Prevention Research at the Keck School of Medicine, USC; the Health Bureaus,
Centers for Disease Control, and Institute of Health Education in seven
cities; the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention; Peking
University; and at least one university in each of the seven participating
provinces. The municipal government, Health Bureau, and Education
Committee in each city provide additional support.
|
|
