Conference poster
Cigarillo Use Prevention Messaging Themes: Qualitative Feedback from Black Young Adults
Annals of behavioral medicine, v 60(Supplement_1), pp S115-S115
01 Apr 2026
Abstract
Background: Cigarillo use can cause cancer and heart and lung diseases. U.S. Black young adults have a high prevalence of use, with beliefs about anticipated outcome expectancies (OE) linked to use behaviors. However, little is known about how effective OE messaging themes may be in prevention messaging. Thus, we qualitatively examined how contextualizing cigarillo use health harms with OE themes may affect message effectiveness among Black young adults.
Methods: In May-December 2024, 52 Black 18-30-year-olds susceptible to or had experimented with cigarillos completed a within-subjects, eye-tracking task with prevention messages and a qualitative interview to provide their feedback on message saliency and liking/disliking message content for OE themes. Messages described cigarillo use health risks (i.e., long-term, short-term, social, and nicotine addiction) contextualized to four OE themes: 1) smoking/sensory experience, 2) relaxation and pleasure from use, 3) social admirability, and 4) cigarillo use misaligning with personal authenticity/values. Four messages per theme included text and imagery. Two coders conducted qualitative analysis within and across OE themes.
Results: Most participants felt messages resonated with them overall, with a few participants per theme expressing that certain themes were less salient to them. The social admirability theme (e.g., cigarillo use leaves an unpleasant odor that others notice) received the most positive feedback for theme saliency, followed in turn by smoking/sensory experience (e.g., while cigarillos may taste good, you can lose ability to taste), relaxation/pleasure (e.g., cigarillo smoking being more “tense” than “relaxing” due to increased blood pressure), and misalignment with authenticity/values (e.g., framing heart disease as “breaking the soul”). Also, while participants generally liked all message content across themes, more participants expressed dislike toward the message content for misalignment with authenticity/values compared to the others, with this theme eliciting the most mixed reactions.
Conclusion: Our findings suggest that contextualizing cigarillo use health harms with relevant outcome expectancies can potentially be effective among Black young adults. Messages that highlight social admirability and sensory experiences may be especially promising, though there is a need to use various message themes to enhance overall message saliency and effectiveness among Black young adults.
Metrics
1 Record Views
Details
- Title
- Cigarillo Use Prevention Messaging Themes: Qualitative Feedback from Black Young Adults
- Creators
- Henri Brignol - Drexel University, Community Health and PreventionSally Nyarko - Drexel UniversityLem Phan - Drexel University, Community Health and PreventionMignonne C Guy - Virginia Commonwealth UniversityKymberle L Sterling - Rutgers, The State University of New JerseyKelvin Choi - National Institute on Minority Health and Health DisparitiesJeff Niederdeppe - Cornell UniversityLilianna Phan - Drexel University, Community Health and Prevention
- Publication Details
- Annals of behavioral medicine, v 60(Supplement_1), pp S115-S115
- Conference
- 47th SBM Annual Meeting and Scientific Sessions (Society of Behavioral Medicine), 47th (Chicago, Illinois, United States, 22 Apr 2026–25 Apr 2026)
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press
- Number of pages
- 1
- Resource Type
- Conference poster
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Community Health and Prevention
- Web of Science ID
- WOS:001748497501067
- Other Identifier
- 991022189171104721