Addressing Parental Tobacco Use in Somali Immigrant Families
Household smoking exposes children to harmful secondhand and thirdhand smoke, raising risks for asthma, respiratory illness, sudden infant death syndrome, and long-term diseases like cancer and heart disease. Parental tobacco use also shapes children’s future beliefs and behaviors around smoking. Somali immigrant families in Minnesota face disproportionate tobacco-related health risks. Somali male first generation immigrants smoke at two to three times the rate of the general U.S. population, and Somali women have a high prevalence of shisha (hookah) use. However, cultural stigma, language barriers, and structural barriers such as limited access to smoking cessation resources prevent many Somali parents from receiving and using these resources to support them in quitting tobacco products.
This project adapts the Clinical Effort Against Secondhand Smoke Exposure (CEASE) program to better serve Somali families, creating CEASE+: a culturally tailored, family-centered intervention delivered through pediatric primary care to parents who smoke.
Research objectives
- This project will adapt the CEASE program by conducting focus groups and interviews with Somali parents who smoke (or live with someone who smokes) to better understand what prevents parents from accessing and using smoking cessation resources and to identify potential solutions to better connecting parents to this care during their children's doctors visits. The research team will work with a Community Advisory Board and tobacco research experts and will use these insights to develop culturally tailored messaging, language support, and a community health worker (CHW) outreach component.
- CEASE+ will then be piloted in two pediatric clinics with Somali parents who smoke to assess how well it works for this population (i.e., feasibility, acceptability, and outcomes such as smoking abstinence, use of cessation resources, and adoption of smoke-free home and car rules).
- Finally, our team will conduct interviews with participating parents, clinicians, and staff in the CEASE+ pilot trial to gather their feedback on CEASE+ to guide future changes to the program.
Timeframe:
This study will be conducted over 4.5 years from August 2025 through December 2029.
Funding Source:
NIH-NIDA K23DA062012
Team
Principal Investigator
April Wilhelm, MD, MPH
Research Staff
Asmaa Issa, MS, and Hafsa Ali