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Page: << Prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | Next >> Using information from the large Framingham Heart Study that began in 1948, Fowler and his colleague Nicholas Christakis of Harvard Medical School identified social connections for 5,124 people involved in the study. They found an average of 10.4 social ties per subject to someone else in the study network.
The average age of those included in the study was 38, and 53 percent were female. The average education level was 1.6 years of college. The number of people smoking mirrored national trends, with an all-time high of nearly 66 percent to a low of 22.3 percent. Smoking behavior was collected for 1971 through 2003.
During that time period, the researchers found that smokers and nonsmokers began to form separate social networks.
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"People used to have the idea of smokers being the bad boy who'd be popular, but now smoking isn't only bad for your physical health, but for your social health as well," said Fowler.
The researchers also found that the more educated people were, the more likely they were to influence smoking behavior.
That's one of the findings that most concern editorial author, Dr. Steven Schroeder, who said, "Smoking is increasingly concentrated in the lower classes, and in people with mental illness, and the risk is one of stigma." That may make it even harder for them to get the help they need, added Schroeder, who is a distinguished professor of health and health care, and director of the smoking cessation leadership center at the University of California, San Francisco.
But, said Schroeder, "Don't think it's a lost cause," if all of your friends and family smoke. Other factors, such as your own desire to stop smoking, your health, the price of cigarettes, smoke-free indoor areas, health information on how harmful smoking is, and counter-marketing can all help reinforce your decision to quit.
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