Comparison of Youth Smoking Rates in Somerset County NJ and Overall Rates Across New Jersey Introduction Results Figure 1: A buffer analysis of schools in Somerset County and their proximity to tobacco vendors. Depicts “priority sites” which include tobacco vendors within a 1/2 mile radius of schools. Youth tobacco usage and smoking in the United States continues to be a problem today and currently about 1.1 million high school students are current smokers (CDC,2017). In 2017, 14.3% of NJ high school students were smokers (GASP,2017). As of 2013, the national rate of youth smoking rested at 15.7% ( Specifically, I wanted to explore youth smoking in New Jersey by first looking at the proximity of schools, in Somerset County, to vendors of tobacco products. The “priority zones” would depict locations of vendors within a 1/2 mile of schools. Then I look to compare this data to data nationally regarding youth rates of smoking across New Jersey. Indeed, minors in close contact with tobacco are more likely to start smoking. Part 1: According to my buffer analysis in Figures 1 & 2, there are 68 tobacco vendors in Somerset County that fall within a 1/2 radius of a school. This means that about 65% of tobacco vendors are responsible for creating “priority sites” where minors have greater accessibility to these products. A major contributor to accessibility being the social aspect where friends or family provide the tobacco products willingly or unwillingly. Commercially, vendors illegal will sell minors tobacco products. “Youth adjust their tobacco sources depending on the level of commercial availability,”(Dent, Biglan, 2003). In other words, the greater commercial accessibility the greater percentage of high school smokers overall. Part 2: The graph (Figure 3) indicates that in Somerset county the greatest category of high school smokers are “ever” smokers. Ever smokers have already reached “long term” (more than 100+ cigarettes). This indicates that in Somerset county, there is a steady flow of vendors who make it easily accessible for high school students to obtain tobacco products. Figure 2: A close-up of Bridgewater, NJ where there is a large cluster of priority sites. Data I utilized data from the 2017 Youth Tobacco Survey in order to gather data regarding tobacco usage by high school students in Somerset County. Additionally, I collected data from The NJ Office of GIS REST Directory to create the map of schools and tobacco vendors in Somerset county. I also utilized GIS Open Data to obtain the boundaries for Somerset county and the NJ counties. Also, I obtained data from HealthData.gov that depict the rate of Adult smokers in New Jersey. Conclusions Overall, Somerset County has many schools where their students have decent accessibility to tobacco products both socially and commercially. Methods Part 1: ARCMap Input the topographic map of NJ as well as Somerset county boundaries layer Input NJ schools and Tobacco Vendors layers Snipped these NJ layers to fit in Somerset County Inputed buffer zone of 1/2 mile radius. Created “priority zones” Part 2: Graph Obtained CSV file from the 2017 Youth Tobacco Survey Data involved youth smoking rates in Somerset County Inputted data into Google slides Created a bar graph that depicts current, ever and frequent smokers Bibliography Dent, Clyde, and A. Biglan. "Relation between Access to Tobacco and Adolescent Smoking." Tobacco Control. https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.74.7.660 Figure 3: This bar graph illustrates data from the 2017 YTS. This data shows the percentage of high school students in Somerset County who are considered either current, ever, or frequent smokers. Author: Alexandra Gilgorri Contributors: