Daily HealthBeat Tip

Race, poverty and smoking

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I'm Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

A look at smoking rates among blacks indicates that people who are poor are a lot more likely to smoke.

Researcher Jorge Delva of the University of Michigan found that when he looked at survey responses by more than one-thousand low-income blacks in the Detroit area. Delva's study, which was supported by the National Institutes of Health, was in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

In the survey, 59 percent of men and 41 percent of women were smokers. That's far more than U.S. adults overall – only about 22 percent of whom are smokers.

Delva's prediction:

"The burden of disease already present among low-income populations is not only likely to remain high but also likely to grow in magnitude." (seven seconds)

Adding to the risk – many of the smokers surveyed started in their teens.

Learn more at www.hhs.gov.

HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I'm Ira Dreyfuss.

Last revised: January 4, 2005

The White House | USA.gov | HHS Archive | No FEAR Act