Social Media Campaign Archives

Collaborator Spotlight:
Dr. Andrew Sussman

January 20, 2023 Klein Buendel

Andrew Sussman, Ph.D., MCRP, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of New Mexico (UNM) and the Associate Director of the Office of Community Outreach and Engagement at the UNM Cancer Center. He received his Ph.D. from the University of New Mexico.

Dr. Sussman focuses his research efforts on primary health and cancer care delivery research and patient-provider counseling dynamics among health disparity populations in New Mexico. He also has research interests in clinical decision making, health service delivery, community-based participatory research, and health disparities in community settings. He also has expertise in qualitative and mixed method research, formative assessment, and process evaluation.

Currently, Dr. Sussman is serving as a Multiple Principal Investigator along with Klein Buendel’s Dr. David Buller on the study, #4Corners4Health: A Social Media Cancer Prevention Program for Rural Emerging Adults (CA268037). This study aims to aid rural emerging adults (aged 18-26 years) in making informed decisions that reduce cancer risk factors and prevent cancer later in life and help emerging adults evaluate and resist misinformation and marketing that promote cancer risk behaviors. This will be accomplished using a social media campaign designed with community advisors for diverse young adults living in rural counties in the Four Corners states (AZ, CO, NM, and UT). Social media may reach emerging adults more than interventions through other community channels (for example, clinics, schools, and workplaces) and for lower cost in the geographically-dispersed, underserved rural communities in the Mountain West.

Risks and Protective Factors for Non-medical Prescription Drug Use among Teen Girls

February 16, 2022 Klein Buendel

Prevention efforts can be informed by learning more about the risks and protective factors for adolescent non-medical use of prescription drugs (NMUPD). A study was conducted with data collected from the Health Chat study to look at the potential influence of maternal factors, social norms, and perceptions of risk and availability on NMUPD by adolescent females. Health Chat was a social media intervention to help reduce mothers’ permissiveness toward their teen daughters’ indoor tanning behavior in an effort to prevent skin cancer. Mother-daughter communication on other health topics was also analyzed. Methods and findings for this NMUPD analysis have been published online in the journal, Drugs: Education, Prevention and Policy.

Multiple logistic regression was used for analysis. Daughters’ past NMUPD and inclination for future NMUPD were regressed onto descriptive norms for friend use, perceived drug accessibility and risk of harm from use, daughter age, mothers’ disapproval about use, mothers’ past NMUPD and inclination for future NMUPD, and the mother-daughter relationship quality. Akaike weights and lasso regressions were also estimated to evaluate the relative importance of each correlate. Higher descriptive norms for friend use, older age, and mothers’ inclination for NMUPD were risk factors for daughters’ NMUPD. Protective factors were a closer mother-daughter relationship and mothers’ disapproving attitudes towards NMUPD. The authors conclude that friend descriptive norms, mother-daughter relationship quality, and mothers’ attitudes about NMUPD could be explored as key targets for prevention efforts.

This research was funded by a grant and supplement from the National Cancer Institute (CA192652; Dr. David Buller and Dr. Sherry Pagoto, Multiple Principal Investigators). The lead author is Gemma Wallace from Colorado State University. Collaborating authors include Dr. Katie Baker and Dr. Stephanie Mathis from East Tennessee State University; Dr. Kimberly Henry from Colorado State University; Dr. Sherry Pagoto from the University of Connecticut; and Dr. David Buller and Julia Berteletti from Klein Buendel.