Foundation Releases Report on Missouri Tobacco Use
Missourians Face Greater Risk of Tobacco-Related Disease
St. Louis, Mo., Mar. 25, 2010 -- Missouri Foundation for Health (MFH) has released Where Do We Stand? Characteristics of Missouri Tobacco Users, an update on smoking habits and trends in the state.
Prepared by the Center for Tobacco Policy Research (CTPR) at Washington University in St. Louis, the MFH-funded report examines important trends among Missouri smokers regarding gender, ethnicity, age, income level, geography and other factors.
This report is the first in a series analyzing the findings from MFH’s 2007 Missouri County-Level Study of Adult Tobacco Use and Related Chronic Conditions and Practices, which collected data on the smoking habits and related disease factors of nearly 50,000 Missourians.
Some key points from the current report:
Missourians with annual income below $15,000 are more than twice as likely to smoke as those with annual income above $75,000.
Twenty-nine percent of Missourians age 25 to 34 are smokers, a significantly higher percentage than other age groups in the state.
More than 23% of Missouri women are smokers, a significantly higher percentage than the national average for women (17.4%).
Downloada copy of the Where Do We Stand? report from the MFH website at http://www.mffh.org/mm/files/CharacteristicsMOTobaccoUsers.pdf. The 2007 Missouri County-Level Study, which contains smoking data on every county in the state, is available at http://www.mffh.net/mm/files/CountyLevelStudy_ExecutiveSummary.pdf.
Established in 2000, MFH is the largest nongovernmental funder of community health activities in Missouri. MFH is in its eighth year of grantmaking, having issued more than $363 million in grants and awards to date. It is dedicated to improving the health of unserved and underserved residents in 84 Missouri counties and the City of St. Louis.