The Annenberg Public Policy Center will take part in the new Penn Prevention Research Center, created by a five-year, $4.35 million grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to establish an interdisciplinary center dedicated to preventing chronic disease and reducing health disparities in southeastern Pennsylvania. APPC associate director Amy Jordan will co-lead an area of the PRC.
A new study published in the online journal Media and Communication finds that Americans’ answer to one of the long-running questions in a Gallup poll – are you afraid to walk alone in your neighborhood at night? – may be influenced by the amount of violence shown on popular prime-time television dramas.
Better driver training and closer parental supervision of young drivers could reduce some of the major risks that lead to teen driver crashes, according to a review of recent studies published online this month in the Journal of Adolescent Health. “A lot of crashes involving adolescent drivers are due to inexperience, as opposed to recklessness or the inability to pay attention to the road,” said the lead author, Daniel Romer.
A pair of studies involving more than 450 parents in Philadelphia that examined the effects of household smoking bans found that homes that imposed smoking bans were effective at reducing the number of cigarettes smoked at home. One study, in the American Journal of Public Health, found that smoking levels in a home did not determine whether a home imposed a ban; the other, in Preventive Medicine, profiled smoking policies in homes with children under the age of 13.
