Published in PLOS ONE, the study analysed questionnaire and interview data from the Determinants of young Adult Social well-being and Health (DASH) study, one of the UK's largest longitudinal studies of ethnically diverse young people.
Information about smoking and experiences of racism was collected from over 6500 pupils at 51 London schools. Surveys were completed when pupils were aged 11-13 and then again with 4785 of the pupils at age 14-16. Over 600 participants were then followed up aged 21-23 as part of a pilot study and 42 undertook qualitative interviews.
The team, working in collaboration with researchers at UCL and the MRC Social and Public Health Sciences Unit at the University of Glasgow, discovered that the young people they studied were around 80 per cent more likely to have smoked if they also indicated that they had experienced some form of racism. The findings support theories from previous studies that have suggested racism can trigger a stress response that results in risky health behaviours, such as smoking.
[For more on this story by King's College London, go to https://www.sciencedaily.com/r.../01/180124143711.htm]
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