Effective Interventions to Prevent Youth Vaping Behaviours: A Rapid Review

In partnership with Alberta Health Services, the Centre for Healthy Communities (CHC) Team recently published a rapid review that identified what interventions are effective to prevent youth (aged 6–18 years) from initiating vaping. The review found promising results for various interventions spanning different levels of intrusiveness (i.e., from interventions that eliminate choices to those that have no impact on people's autonomy). The analysis of equity considerations suggest interventions targeting younger children need to be age-appropriately tailored to address positive attitudes towards vaping as well as poor knowledge and misperceptions of low risks of vaping without increasing children’s curiosity about and intention to experiment with vaping.

Opinion: Invest Tobacco Settlement Cash to Save More Albertans from Smoking

In this op-ed, authors Leigh Allard, Angeline Webb (CHC Practice and Scientific Advisory Committee Representative), and Les Hagen (CHC Practice Affiliate) praise the success of the Government of Alberta’s commercial tobacco-reduction strategy, a public health campaign that has contributed to almost half a million fewer Albertan smokers in the past two decades. The authors also emphasize that despite this success, smoking remains a pertinent issue with disproportionately high rates among the LGBTQ2S+ community, Indigenous people, and people with mental illness. The article calls on the Alberta government to adequately fund the new Tobacco and Vaping Reduction Strategy by allocating a portion of the recent settlement received from tobacco companies towards this initiative.

Understanding the Short- and Long-term Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on People Who Use Substances in Edmonton's Inner City

Results are now available from a 2023 study led by Dr. Heather Morris (a newly appointed Assistant Professor in Nursing, and former School of Public Health PhD trainee with Dr. Elaine Hyshka [CHC Scientist and the Principal Investigator of the study]) that explored the severe impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, escalating drug toxicity, and gaps in health and social services for people who use drugs in Edmonton. The findings of this report underscore the need for a comprehensive, community-based approach to address the complex health, social, and policy challenges facing people who use drugs, with a focus on harm reduction, mental health support, and innovative service models like safer supply programs and supervised smoking inhalation services.

Exploring Barriers and Drivers of Water Reuse in Alberta

On October 24, 2024, the CHC in partnership with Alberta Innovates, Alberta Municipalities and the City of Calgary, hosted an Innovation Forum on the topic of Water Reuse and Climate Resiliency in Municipalities. The Innovation Forum was featured in a recent Alberta Innovates Making Waves article.

In case you missed it, highlights of the conversations from the Innovation Forum were captured by a graphic recorder and are available on the CHC website.

Questions? Contact us here.