An Almost Empty Scoping Review: State of the Research on Tobacco Prevention and Cessation Messaging Strategies for Black and/or Latine LGBTQ+ Youth and Young Adults

ABSTRACT

Research has yet to offer strong recommendations for effective tobacco prevention and cessation messaging that can reduce tobacco-related health disparities among Black and/or Latine LGBTQ+ youth and young adults. As a result of predatory marketing strategies and community stressors, among other factors, LGBTQ+ youth and young adults use tobacco products at higher rates than their non-LGBTQ+ peers. These disparities are uniquely complex among Black and/or Latine youth and young adults within the LGBTQ+ community, but there has been little research addressing the communication strategies that can promote tobacco prevention and cessation for these groups. Given the promise and history of successful health communication campaigns for tobacco control, this research is crucial. We thus conducted a scoping review to identify trends and gaps in the empirical research published from 2002–2022 that analyzed tobacco prevention and cessation communication strategies for Black and/or Latine LGBTQ+ youth and young adults (ages 12–30) living in the United States. Despite an initial search query of 3,182 articles after deleting duplicates, only five articles were eligible for inclusion, three of which evaluated the This Free Life campaign. Accordingly, we view our scoping review as an almost empty review. Although our results offer preliminary insight into messaging strategies used in these campaigns, our larger contribution is to expose the scarcity of tobacco-related communication research being conducted among Black and/or Latine LGBTQ+ communities. Given the marginalization these communities face, we issue a call to action for researchers and campaign designers and offer a series of suggestions for future research.

Acknowledgements

We also appreciate the contributions of Aidan L. Grennell Cormier during the early stages of this project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. We use the term “Latine” to be gender inclusive and prefer Latine over Latinx in recognition that Latino/a/e people have expressed discontent with the Latinx term, as it is not a linguistically natural term in Spanish (Franco, 2024).

2. We use the phrase “Black and/or Latine” to acknowledge that individuals may identify as Black, Latine, or as both Black and Latine.

3. Note that we considered an article to focus on ages 12–30 in three scenarios: (1) if the entire article sample was anywhere within the age group, (2) if the article sample was broader but included disaggregated data by ages anywhere within the age group, or (3) if there was not disaggregated data but the mean or median age of the article sample was between 12 and 30.

Additional information

Funding

This report was supported by Maryland Department of Health [Grant No. #M00B5600038] awarded to the University of Maryland Prevention Research Center by the MDH Center for Tobacco Prevention and Control (CTPC) paid for (in full or in part) by Maryland Cigarette Restitution Funds. We also acknowledge support to the University of Maryland Prevention Research Center through [cooperative agreement #U48DP006382] from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the MDH, CTPC, or the CDC.