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Jared Ozuna

Articles by Jared Ozuna

Get Free Social Media Training from the Experts


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Wondering how Twitter works? Want to get more social media followers? You're invited to take advantage of Virtual Office Hours, a federal program from AIDS.gov that offers free, one-on-one technical assistance to help HIV/AIDS and other health- or minority-focused programs access, talk about or improve their use of digital tools and social media channels to improve their outreach. These 45-minute sessions occur every every Tuesday and Thursday from 2-4 p.m. EST. Register here. Learn more about the ...

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Study: Ads May Be Tempting Teens to Vape



Teens who have been exposed to electronic cigarette ads in the last 30 days are more likely to start vaping, according to a recent study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Engadget reports. "The unrestricted marketing of e-cigarettes and dramatic increases in their use by youth could reverse decades of progress in preventing tobacco use among youth," Brian King, deputy director at the CDC's smoking division, said in a statement. The data comes from the CDC's 2014 National Tobacco Survey that looked into the habits of more than 20,000 middle and high school students from across the country and found that the number of E-cigs users is increasing among teenagers. Along with their findings the CDC recommends “limiting e-cig sales to stores that only admit adults, ...

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CDC: 1 in 4 High School Students Use E-Cigarettes



A report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) finds that, while the rate of cigarette smoking among U.S. teens did not increase, the use of e-cigarettes and other tobacco vaping products has been on the rise over the last four years, according to Mashable. "E-cigarettes are now the most commonly used tobacco product among youth, and use continues to climb," CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden said in a release. "No form of youth tobacco use is safe. Nicotine is an addictive drug and use during adolescence may cause lasting harm to brain development." The CDC collected data from 20,000 middle and high school students between 2011-2015. The rate of high school students who reported using an e-cigarette at least once in the last month increased from 1.5% in 2011 to 16% in ...

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Smokers Earn Less and Have a Harder Time Finding Jobs, Study Finds



Smoking has been associated with cancers and other chronic diseases, but a new study from Stanford School Medicine now links smoking with earning less and having a harder time finding a job, Science Daily reports. For the study, researchers studied job hunters in the San Francisco area between 2013 and 2015. About half were smokers and half were not. According to the study, after a year, twice as many nonsmokers had jobs. “Among smokers re-employed at one year, on average, their hourly income was $5 less relative to reemployed nonsmokers: $15.10 versus $20.27, a 25.5 percent difference," said Judith Prochaska of Stanford University and colleagues wrote in their report, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association's JAMA Internal Medicine. According to ...

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“Cold Turkey” Best Way to Quit Smoking, Study Finds



If you want to quit smoking, it is better to quit all at once, NBC Health reports. A study by Oxford University “randomly assigned almost 700 adult smokers to either an abrupt quitting or gradual reduction group. Each person set a 'quit day' of two weeks after they entered the study, and saw a research nurse once a week until then.” After 4 weeks of tracking 700 adults, researchers found that 40% of the gradual group were not smoking compared to 49% of the abrupt quit group. "However, with smoking, the norm is to advise people to stop all at once and our study found evidence to support that," Nicola Lindson-Hawley, lead study author told Reuters Health by email. "What we found was that more people managed to quit when they stopped smoking all in one go than when they gradually ...

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Breann De Santiago: An Èxito! Grad With a Passion for Latino Health Research



Editor’s Note: This is the story of a graduate of the 2015 Èxito! Latino Cancer Research Leadership Training program. Apply now for 2016. Breann De Santiago Rancho Cucamonga, Calif. A packing warehouse may not seem inspirational on the surface, but for Breann, it is a symbol of her family’s and her father’s dedication and perseverance in the face of big hardships. She certainly shares these characteristics, because she’s already become one of the first in her family to go to college and is gaining research project experience as she pursues her master’s degree.  Her education and research experiences at Whittier College and her internship at John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have led her to career goals of becoming a public health professional. Breann received ...

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The Science of SaludToday


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The Internet is crazy huge. So, how can health communicators reach the right people with the right health messages? At Salud America!, formerly called SaludToday, we're all about using "digital content curation" to raise awareness of the particular health issues that disproportionately burden Latinos, as well as promote solutions and build people's capacity to change these issues. Check out our new scientific article that explains how we "curate." Curation is an emerging strategy that uses a systematic, refined process to create tailored health messages and prevent mixed messaging and information overload for an audience. With massive amounts of content created across the Internet every minute, our digital health curation model and three-step ...

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Vaping Could Harm Unborn Babies



New data suggests using e-cigarettes during pregnancy may be as harmful as using tobacco products, DW reports. Researchers at New York University Langone presented results from animal experiments that suggests that vaping while being pregnant may harm the fetus. For the experiment, researchers exposed pregnant mice to e-cigarette vapors and compared them to pregnant mice that were not exposed to alternative tobacco products. "The young animals [exposed] showed genetic changes in the cortex of the frontal lobe, the part of the brain responsible for cognition, planning and motivation," according to Judy Zelikoff, toxicologist and lead researcher at NYU Langone "Of course mice are not humans," Zelikoff accepted. "These are only animal models. But if I was pregnant, I would definitely ...

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#SaludTues Tweetchat 1p ET 6/23/15: “How to Get More Latinos to Quit Smoking”



About 5 million U.S. Latinos smoke, and lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths among Latino men and second-leading cause among Latina women, statistics show. Why is this happening—and how can Latinos quit smoking and tobacco for good? Let’s use #SaludTues on June 23, 2015, to tweet information, resources, and tips that can help Latinos both young and old kick the habit now (and kick the habit for good!): WHAT: #SaludTues Tweetchat: “How to Get More Latinos to Quit Smoking” DATE: Tuesday, June 23, 2015 TIME: 1-2 p.m. ET (Noon-1 p.m. CT) WHERE: On Twitter with hashtag #SaludTues HOST: @SaludToday CO-HOSTS: U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (@VeteransHealth), the National Cancer Institute (@SmokefreeUS) We’ll open the floor to your stories and experiences as ...

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