Community-based participatory research on smoking cessation among Chinese Americans in Flushing, Queens, New York City

In the first phase of the present study, household interviews in Chinese languages of 2,537 adults ages 18 – 74 in Flushing, Queens and Sunset Park, Brooklyn found a smoking rate of 30.3% for men. This smoking prevalence is consistent with results from surveys in California (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1992) and Chicago, Illinois (Yu et al., 2002) showing 28 and 34% of Chinese-American men smoking, respectively. The smoking rate for Chinese-American men is higher than that of any other ethnic group in the USA except for Native Americans (MMWR, 2003). Six focus groups with men in Flushing, Queens who smoke, three conducted in Mandarin and three in Cantonese, revealed a low level of awareness of approaches to quitting smoking and where to go for assistance in quitting. Both the household survey and focus groups found a low level of knowledge about the health consequences of smoking. These baseline survey and focus group data point to a disparity in information and services for smoking cessation available to the Chinese-American population compared with other populations in the USA. The baseline household survey also found that 87.8% speak Chinese at home and 79.6% read Chinese newspapers at least once a week, documenting a specific need for Chinese language information.https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1356182040001141