The Effects of Antismoking Messages From Family, School, and Mass Media on Smoking Behavior and Smoking Intention Among Chinese Adolescents.

The prevalence of adolescent smoking has been increasing rapidly in China. Expanding adolescent exposure to antismoking messages may be an effective approach to prevent tobacco use among this population. Using a cross-sectional sample of 8,444 high school students in four Chinese cities, this study assessed the relation between self-reported exposure to antismoking messages from families, schools, and mass media and the rate of past 30-day smoking and smoking intention among junior and senior high school students. Results from logistic regression suggested that antismoking messages delivered via school and media inhibited both tobacco use and the intention to smoke. The effects of familial warnings about harmful effects of smoking, in contrast, were at best insignificant.

'It's not within my control': local explanations for the development of lung cancer in China.

Rates of lung cancer in China are rising rapidly, creating an urgent need for prevention. Effective prevention measures require understanding local beliefs and perceptions about the risk for developing lung cancer. This article explores the explanations that Chinese lung cancer patients and their families give about the aetiology of their disease. Fifty-three interviews were conducted among lung cancer patients and their family members at a large tumour hospital in southern China. Participants presented a complex multifactorial explanation of lung cancer associating their disease with risks like tobacco use, occupational exposures, environmental pollution, lifestyle changes, and personal characters. While these are all standard risk factors commonly associated with lung cancer, participants presented them within a larger contextual frame of structural issues that impede their ability to change their behaviours. Using a social ecological model, we demonstrate how China's socio-cultural environment shapes assumptions about the risk of lung cancer with particular reference to work, home, social situations, and the natural environment.

The risk of success: cultural determinants of chronic disease and sexually transmitted infections among urban Chinese men.

During the 1950s and 1960s, the People's Republic of China successfully waged a series of public health campaigns to control the infectious diseases that were ravaging them as a nation. This included a campaign that targeted the social roots of sexually transmitted infections (STIs). China is now facing a new disease profile that includes emerging epidemics of chronic disease as well as reemerging epidemics of STIs. Many of these diseases are strongly associated with gender and occupation, suggesting need for a critical model of health literacy that recognizes the role of social risk in promoting risky behaviors rather than focusing on a simple model that disseminates knowledge about biomedical risk. Such a model is useful for explaining why people armed with knowledge about biomedical risk continue to engage in risky behaviors. This article focuses on the social risks that wealthy Chinese businessmen and government officials negotiate on a daily basis. It highlights the concept of guanxi that is so central to building relationships in China and explains the traditional process of yingchou used to establish and maintain relationships among this cadre of men who depend on one another for political and economic success. This process, which has become pervasive in China's era of market reform, requires men to engage in frequent practices of smoking, drinking, eating and female-centered entertainment that are contributing both to their success and to their increasing vulnerability to chronic disease and STIs. The paper concludes by offering some alternative approaches to addressing this emerging disease pattern among this particular segment of China's population.

Acculturation and endocrine disrupting chemical-associated personal care product use among US-based foreign-born Chinese women of reproductive age.

BACKGROUND: Personal care products (PCPs) are an important source of endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) linked to adverse reproductive health outcomes. OBJECTIVE: We evaluated EDC-associated PCP use and acculturation among Asian women. METHODS: Our study included 227 foreign-born Chinese women ages 18-45 seeking obstetrics-gynecology care at community health centers (Boston, MA). Acculturation was measured by English-language use, length of US residence, and age at US entry. Self-reported use of PCPs (crème rinse/conditioner, shampoo, perfume/cologne, bar soap/body wash, liquid hand soap, moisturizer/lotion, colored cosmetics, sunscreen, and nail polish) in the last 48 h was collected. Latent class analysis was used to identify usage patterns. We also conducted multivariable logistic to determine the cross-sectional associations of acculturation measures and the use of individual PCP types. RESULTS: Those who used more PCP types, overall and by each type, tended to be more acculturated. Women who could speak English had 2.77 (95% CI: 1.10-7.76) times the odds of being high PCP users compared to their non-English speaking counterparts. English-language use was associated with higher odds of using perfume/cologne and nail polish. SIGNIFICANCE: Our findings give insight about EDC-associated PCP use based on acculturation status, which can contribute to changes in immigrant health and health disparities.

`Sex' - It's not only Women's Work: A Case for Refocusing on the Functional Role that Sex Plays in Work for both Women and Men.

Mention of the term sex work often invokes images of marginalized women at risk for HIV infection. Such images, however, are counterintuitive to the functional role intended by the movement that spawned use of the terms `sex work' and `sex worker'. This article looks at the sexual practices of men in urban China to argue for a return to a functional definition of `sex work', which was originally meant to legitimize the role sex plays in work. The progenitors of this movement intended to use `sex work' as a means to legitimize sex as an income generating activity for women involved in prostitution. I show that sex can also serve a functional role in the work-related duties of men seeking economic and political success in contemporary urban China. Men in China utilize sex as one way for demonstrating the loyalty necessary to access state-owned and controlled resources in a market economy governed under a Leninist system. Overall the article demonstrates that reclaiming perception of sex work as a functional rather than behavioral category can expand its use for preventing HIV among the broad subset of people who engage in sex as part of their work.

'Mobile men with money': the socio-cultural and politico-economic context of 'high-risk' behaviour among wealthy businessmen and government officials in urban China.

China's transition from an injection drug-driven HIV epidemic to one primarily transmitted through sexual contact has triggered concern over the potential for HIV to move into the non-drug-injecting population. Much discussion has focused on the migrant men of China's vast 'floating population' who are considered a high-risk group. As a result, many men who frequently engage in high-risk behaviour but are not included in this especially vulnerable group are evading HIV prevention messages. This paper highlights the socio-cultural and politico-economic factors that motivate many of China's wealthy businessmen and government officials, sometimes referred to as 'mobile men with money', to engage in such behaviour. Examination of the activities related to the work of these men reveals a situation where the confluence of a market-oriented economy operating within a socialist-style political system under the influence of traditional networking practices has engendered a unique mode of patron-clientelism that brings them together over shared social rituals including feasting, drinking and female-centered entertainment that is often coupled with sexual services. As a result, consideration of the socio-cultural factors influencing these men's sexual practices is important for responding to the newly emerging stage of China's HIV epidemic.