The APRU Global Health Program (GHP) invites you to participate in a new collaborative study titled “An online survey of tobacco and e-cigarettes among students in the Pacific Rim.”

In previous annual workshops of the Global Health Program, the need was identified to learn more about students’ awareness and use of tobacco and e-cigarettes. You are probably aware that electronic, or “e-cigarettes”, are a new generation of devices that deliver a nicotine-containing vapor to their users.  Many products are flavored and marketed to university-aged young adults.

The GHP has created a survey to obtain information on student’s tobacco use, perceptions regarding e-cigarettes, exposure to e-cigarette marketing, and other related topics. The results may help to identify which policies may be most effective in reducing students’ tobacco use and should help member universities as they consider how to control use of e-cigarettes.

We hope that all APRU member universities will be able to participate. 

Any other interested university is also welcome to participate. The survey is in English and is available online until September 1, 2016. It only takes about 15 minutes to complete.  Please see link to survey here. 

The goal of this project is to obtain a varied sample of at least 150 students from different disciplines, age groups and programs at each university. Undergraduate and graduate students are eligible. This study was approved by the USC Institutional Review Board (IRB) (HS-15-00355.) Since this is an anonymous, online survey that is being conducted by a USC research team with their own IRB approval, it might not be necessary for you to obtain your own approval. However, we encourage you to ensure this with your own institution. We can provide our IRB application if you need it. We are leaving it up to each university to decide on the best data collection protocol and report this back to us on the attached page. Some suggestions are:

• Sending the survey link out via email or listserv to all students
• Having instructors give students in selected classes time to complete the survey in class
• Assigning student interns to collect data by attending selected classes or events

Please confirm with Melissa Withers at [email protected] by March 20th, 2016 that you will participate.

Please contact Melissa if you have any questions. Thank you in advance.