• Donald W Helme, Mary Kay Rayens, Sarah E Kercsmar, Sarah M Adkins, Shelby J Amundsen, Erin Lee, Carol A Riker, and Ellen J Hahn.
• University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA.
• Health Promot Pract. 2012 Nov 1;13(6):848-56.

AbstractThe purpose of this article is to describe how the print media portrays secondhand smoke and smoke-free policy in rural communities. Baseline print media clips from an ongoing 5-year study of smoke-free policy development in 40 rural communities were analyzed. The authors hypothesized that community population size would be positively associated with media favorability toward smoke-free policy. Conversely, pounds of tobacco produced and adult smoking prevalence would be negatively associated with media favorability. There was a positive correlation between population size and percentage of articles favorable toward smoke-free policy. The authors did not find a correlation between adult smoking or tobacco produced and media favorability toward smoke-free policy, but we did find a positive relationship between tobacco produced and percentage of pro-tobacco articles and a negative relationship between adult smoking prevalence and percentage of articles about health/comfort. Implications for targeting pro-health media in rural communities as well as policy-based initiatives for tobacco control are discussed.

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