Are Doctors Missing the Moment to Talk to Teens About Tobacco?
Most parents assume that when their teenager sees a doctor, tobacco and vaping come up as a matter of course. New research from faculty at the suggests that's often not the case. Using the 2023 Florida Youth Tobacco Survey, a statewide sample of nearly 3,900 high school students, researchers found that only about one in four teens who visited a doctor's office in the past year recalled a doctor or someone in the office talking to them about the dangers of tobacco products. Compare that to the nearly two-thirds of teens who said a parent or guardian had that conversation with them, and it's clear where prevention messaging is actually landing.
The gap is notable given how confident physicians tend to be about their own practices. Prior surveys have found that the vast majority of pediatricians report routinely counseling adolescent patients about tobacco and nicotine, and electronic health records often show high documented screening rates. Yet when researchers ask teens directly, their recollection tells a different story. The disconnect may come down to how screening happens in practice: a checkbox on an intake form or a prompt buried in an electronic health record may satisfy a screening requirement without ever translating into a conversation a teenager remembers having. The study also found that girls were more likely than boys to report being talked to about tobacco dangers, and teens who identified with an "other" race or ethnicity category were less likely to recall such a discussion than their non-Hispanic white peers.
The findings point toward a need to look more closely at how tobacco screening is actually delivered in the exam room, not just whether it's checked off, and to make sure the message reaches every teen, regardless of gender or background.
Authors from the Kate Marmion School of Public Health include:
Tracey E. Barnett, PhD
Aro Choi, MS
Mirsada Serdarevic, PhD
David Gimeno Ruiz de Porras, PhD
Erika L. Thompson, PhD, MPH
Michael T. Halpern, MD, PhD