7 Clinical Trials for Various Conditions
60 young adult African American vapers who are not current smokers will participate in a baseline functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment, with 4 weekly follow-up surveys to gauge their tobacco use behaviors following the baseline scan. Baseline fMRI tasks will probe critical neurocognitive markers with high potential to account for individual differences in nicotine use prognosis and responsiveness to anti-vaping public service announcements (PSAs).
180 young adult vapers who are not current smokers will participate in a baseline functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment, prospectively linked to a 1-year randomized controlled trial. Baseline fMRI tasks will probe critical neurocognitive markers with high potential to account for individual differences in nicotine use prognosis and responsiveness to anti-vaping public service announcements (PSAs). Participants will be assigned randomly to a survey-only control condition, or one of two intervention orders, Regular PSA then Flavor PSA, and Flavor PSA then Regular PSA (n=60 each) in a 1-year counterbalanced crossover design. Every week intervention groups will receive anti-vaping PSAs either do not specifically address harms associated with vaping flavors (regular PSAs) or PSAs with a theme focusing on the harms of flavored vape products (flavor PSAs). Participants of the intervention groups will switch PSA exposure condition after 6 months. Their evaluations of the PSAs will be assessed with brief weekly online surveys. The links to the weekly online surveys will be sent via e-mail and text which allow them to access the surveys using any device with an internet browser. During the survey, the PSA of that week will first be displayed to PSA groups (n=120), followed by a query to provide message evaluation. Afterward, the survey questions will also assess their e-cigarette, cigarette, other tobacco use, and nicotine dependence, during the past week. The control group (n=60) will complete the surveys without viewing PSAs. In-person assessments at 3, 6, 9, and 12 months will biochemically confirm nicotine exposure.
This study seeks to assess the efficacy of educational messages to correct misperceptions. A large proportion of the American population incorrectly believes that nicotine is the chemical responsible for causing cancer in tobacco products.1-3 This misconception may reduce the likelihood that established smokers who are unwilling or unable to quit tobacco product use completely will switch to less harmful non-combustible products. An online experiment will be used to test if corrective messages can reduce this misperception. The experiment will also test the effects of messages on beliefs about the relative harms of other tobacco products discussed in the message and accuracy of inferential beliefs. This will be accomplished by asking participants questions about two tobacco products that are not explicitly discussed in the messages. The experiment will test if the two components of "narrative coherence," a concept identified in previous reviews of misperception correction as effective,4-6 is effective at reducing misperceptions about nicotine. Component 1 provides an explanation for why the new information is correct and component 2 provides an explanation for how the false information came to be believed. This study will use a factorial design to test the efficacy of the component of coherence individually as well as together. Hypotheses and Research Questions: RQ1: Will participants exposed to different corrective message conditions differ in increased accuracy of beliefs (a) that nicotine does not cause cancer, (b) regarding the relative risk of e-cigarettes compared to cigarettes, (c) regarding the relative risk of very low nicotine cigarettes (VLNC) compared to cigarettes and (d) regarding the relative risk of nicotine replacement therapy compared to cigarettes. H1: Participants exposed to the nicotine corrective message with both components of coherence will be significantly more likely to increase accuracy of beliefs regarding the relative harms of (a) smokeless tobacco compared to cigarettes and (b) cigarillos relative to cigarettes compared to those exposed to messages with just one component or no components of coherence. H2: Participants exposed to the nicotine corrective message with both components of coherence will be significantly more likely to increase their intention to switch completely to a noncombustible product compared to those exposed to messages with just one component or no components of coherence.
Phase 3b of the research will be a laboratory experiment that uses an experimental and analytic design that is parallel to that used in Phase 3a, the online experiment. The primary objective of Phase 3b is to assess physiological response (i.e., eye tracking) to different message appeals of the audio-visual messages used in Phase 3a on respondents' behavioral intentions and UV-related behavioral choices post-exposure. Including time for preparation, viewing, and removal of the monitoring equipment, the message viewing session will take about 45 minutes per session.
Many population-level public health strategies-including media campaigns and other behavioral interventions, screening recommendations, and vaccination policies-rely on messaging to promote cancer prevention and control. These strategies do not take place in a vacuum; rather, they occur in the context of a broader public information environment, which is increasingly characterized by conflicting and often controversial health information. Although studies have documented that such information is prevalent, a critical question remains unanswered: does exposure to conflicting health information in people's routine interactions with the broader information environment threaten the success of message-based population-level public health strategies? And, if so, who is most susceptible to the effects of such exposure? This study will provide a rigorous empirical test of these critical answered questions, guided by two specific aims: First, to evaluate whether prior exposure to conflicting health information influences responses to subsequent unrelated and uncontested health messages, a phenomenon that has been described as "carryover effects" (Primary Aim); and second, to identify whether there are individual-level differences in how conflict affects responses to these unrelated and uncontested health messages (Secondary Aim).
The aim of this study is to examine the utility of neuroimaging technique to evaluate pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) promotion messages for men who have sex with men (MSM) at risk of HIV in Baltimore.
Influenza infection results in an estimated 31 million outpatient visits, 55,000 to 974,200 hospitalizations, and 3,000 to 49,000 deaths. Membership in household in which someone else has influenza is the major risk factor for contracting influenza. The household secondary attack rate (SAR) is as high as 19% based on laboratory-confirmed influenza and 30% based on symptoms. Non-pharmaceutical preventive measures, including education, may play a role in decreasing transmission, but are only effective if started within 36 hours of symptom onset in index cases. Yet, most interventions are delayed because they are not initiated until care is sought. The investigators have demonstrated in one primarily Latino, urban community sample, that text messaging can be used to rapidly identify community members with influenza-like illness (ILI) early in an illness. This early identification would enable implementation of an educational intervention in the optimal time frame to reduce influenza transmission. Providing education within a text message is a proven successful strategy to influence behavior. Text messaging itself is scalable, low-cost, and can be used in low literacy populations. However, using text-message based surveillance to trigger a real-time text-message behavioral educational intervention to decrease household influenza transmission has not been assessed.