Cigarette smoking and adverse health outcomes among adults receiving federal housing assistance

Cigarette smoking and adverse health outcomes among adults receiving federal housing assistance

The following article was recently released online ahead of print by the journal Preventative Medicine. The manuscript was co-authored by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health.

Article: Cigarette smoking and adverse health outcomes among adults receiving federal housing assistance

This study is the first to document the prevalence of cigarette smoking among U.S. public housing residents. The report shows that one-third of adults living in public housing were current cigarette smokers, which is approximately double the prevalence of current cigarette smoking among all U.S. adults. The study also found that adult cigarette smokers living in public housing were more likely than non-smokers living in public housing to have various health risk factors, including reporting fair or poor health, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, disability, asthma, serious psychological distress, loss of all natural teeth, >1 emergency room visit in the past year, and ≥10 work loss days in the past year. These findings reveal that adults who receive housing assistance represent an at-risk population for adverse health outcomes associated with smoking and secondhand smoke. Housing assistance programs provide a valuable platform for the implementation of evidence-based tobacco prevention and control measures, including smokefree policies.

Attachments: Journal Article, Key messages

The abstract and subscription-only access to the article are available on the journal’s website.