Purpose: Continued smoking after a cancer diagnosis is causally linked to cancer-specific and all-cause mortality. Additionally, smoking, in particular after a cancer diagnosis, increases risk for poor therapeutic outcomes, chronic disease and even COV19 infection.
Methods: In order to better understand and address continued smoking among cancer patients, this research applied geospatial mapping analysis to explore the potential association of dedicated smoke/vape shops density and smoking among cancer patients.
Results: Our findings suggest that there is an association between dedicated smoke/vape shops density and continued tobacco product use among cancer patients who live in areas with greater numbers of smoke/vape shops and higher percentage of African Americans and low socioeconomic persons. In the City of Hope-Antelope Valley Center region with an average of 1.4 dedicated smoke/vape shops per sq ml, cancer patients continue to smoke at a rate of almost 10%. This rate is almost twice the 5.2% cancer patient smoking rate of the main cancer center with an average of < 1 dedicated smoke/vape shops per sq ml.
Conclusion: Our study may inform cessation-related research, practice and policies so that researchers, clinicians and policymakers are well-aware of these disparities in dedicated smoke/vape shops proliferation that is disproportionately affecting minority patient, in particular cancer population.
Keywords: African Americans; Cancer patients; Smoke shops. geospatial mapping; Smoking.
© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.