Sara Minsky

Sara Minsky
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute | DFCI · Department of Medical Oncology

MPH

About

36
Publications
9,213
Reads
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978
Citations
Additional affiliations
November 2006 - November 2016
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Position
  • Managing Director

Publications

Publications (36)
Article
Full-text available
Background About 1.35 million deaths annually are attributed to tobacco use in India. The main challenge, given the magnitude of tobacco use and limited resources, is delivering cessation support at scale, low cost, and through a coordinated cross-system effort; one such example being brief advice interventions. However, highly credentialed staff t...
Preprint
BACKGROUND About 1.35 million deaths annually are attributed to tobacco use in India. The main challenge, given the magnitude of tobacco use and limited resources, is delivering cessation support at scale, low cost, and through a coordinated cross-system effort; one such example being brief advice interventions. However, highly credentialed staff t...
Article
Full-text available
Background India is home to about 12% of the world's tobacco users, with about 1.35 million tobacco-related deaths each year. The morbidity and mortality rates are socially patterned based on gender, rural vs. urban residence, education, and other factors. Following the World Health Organization's guidance, it is critical to offer tobacco users sup...
Article
Full-text available
The Outreach Core of the U54 Partnership between the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center and the University of Massachusetts Boston created a new model for addressing cancer inequities that integrates implementation science, community-engaged research, and health promotion. Key elements of the approach include engaging a Community Advisory Board, sup...
Article
Full-text available
Background Tobacco advertising disproportionately targets low socio-economic position (SEP) groups, causing higher rates of tobacco use in this population. Anti-tobacco public health education campaigns persuade against use. This study measured real-time exposure of pro- and anti-tobacco messages from low SEP groups in two American cities. Methods...
Article
Social participation and neighborhood social cohesion are positively associated with health and wellbeing. Given that in‐person social interactions have generally dwindled over the past several decades at least in Western countries and social media use has become more common, in this study, we examined whether and how social media use interacts wit...
Article
Full-text available
Increasing the use of evidence-based programs (EBPs) in community settings is critical for improving health and reducing disparities. Community-based organizations (CBOs) and faith-based organizations (FBOs) have tremendous reach and trust within underserved communities, but their impact is constrained by limited staff capacity to use EBPs. This ex...
Article
Full-text available
Background: People from underserved communities such as those from lower socioeconomic positions or racial and ethnic minority groups are often disproportionately targeted by the tobacco industry, through the relatively high levels of tobacco retail outlets (TROs) located in their neighborhood or protobacco marketing and promotional strategies. It...
Preprint
BACKGROUND People from underserved communities such as those from lower socioeconomic positions or racial and ethnic minority groups are often disproportionately targeted by the tobacco industry, through the relatively high levels of tobacco retail outlets (TROs) located in their neighborhood or protobacco marketing and promotional strategies. It i...
Article
Full-text available
We examined the differential impact of exposure to smoking-related graphic health warnings (GHWs) on risk perceptions and intentions to quit among different audience segments characterized by gender, race/ethnic group, and presence of chronic disease condition. Specifically, we sought to test whether GHWs that portray specific groups (in terms of g...
Article
Introduction: Previous research has documented that smoking prevalence is generally high among low socioeconomic groups and that tobacco industries continue to target these population groups. However, little research has investigated the beliefs of individuals with low socioeconomic position (SEP) about the association between smoking and cancer r...
Article
Full-text available
Background: In 2012, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration proposed nine graphic health warnings (GHWs) on cigarette packaging that were rated equally effective across racial/ethnic, education, or income groups of adult smokers. However, data on GHW effectiveness among sexual and gender minority (SGM) adults, who have higher smoking prevalence, ar...
Article
Full-text available
PLANET MassCONECT was a community-based participatory research project (CBPR) conducted by investigators from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute / Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, in collaboration with partners from Boston, Lawrence and Worcester. The goal of the project, which was conducted from 2008-2013 was to use a CBPR approach to deve...
Article
Full-text available
Insufficient capacity to use evidence-based programs (EBPs) limits the impact of community-based organizations (CBOs) to improve population health and address health disparities. PLANET MassCONECT was a community-based participatory research (CBPR) project conducted in three Massachusetts communities. Researchers and practitioners co-created an int...
Article
Full-text available
Background: Community-engaged data collection offers an important opportunity to build community capacity to harness the power of data and create social change. Objectives: To share lessons learned from engaging 16 adolescents and young adults from a partner community to collect data for a public opinion survey as part of a broader community-based...
Article
Full-text available
Background: Throughout history, people have soothed their fear of disease outbreaks by searching for someone to blame. Such was the case with the April 2009 H1N1 flu outbreak. Mexicans and other Latinos living in the US were quickly stigmatized by non-Latinos as carriers of the virus, partly because of news reports on the outbreak’s alleged origin...
Article
Full-text available
Background: Despite the growing penetration of the Internet, little is known about the usage and browsing patterns of those in poverty. We report on a randomized controlled trial that sheds light on the Internet use and browsing patterns among the urban poor. Methods: The data come from 312 participants in Boston, Massachusetts, from Click to Co...
Conference Paper
Despite efforts to raise public awareness of health disparities to gain public support for structural solutions, surveys have shown that Americans remain largely unaware of disparities and social determinants of health. Local news media may contribute to this knowledge deficit. While media content analyses have found some evidence of national dispa...
Article
Full-text available
Given persistent communication inequalities, it is important to develop interventions to improve Internet and health literacy among underserved populations. These goals drove the Click to Connect (C2C) project, a community-based eHealth intervention that provided novice computer users of low socioeconomic position (SEP) with broadband Internet acce...
Conference Paper
Community engagement and capacity building is vital to addressing health disparities at the community level. As part of our efforts to foster community engagement and capacity building, we recruited and trained sixteen high school and community college students to conduct the population based survey for our federally funded community-based particip...
Conference Paper
Researchers have underscored the importance of including minority and underserved populations in clinical trials and behavioral interventions. So, too, have they highlighted the difficulties of recruiting and retaining these populations. However, most studies have focused on racial/ethnic minorities; substantially less is known about the challenges...
Article
Early vaccination against influenza viruses is a cost-effective solution to prevent contagion and reduce influenza-related morbidity and mortality. In the face of pandemic viruses, such as the A(H1N1), adequate rates of vaccine uptake play a critical role in containing the spread and effects of the disease. In order to understand the reasons underl...
Article
This study assessed the effects of heavy drinking with high or low congener beverages on next-day neurocognitive performance, and the extent to which these effects were mediated by alcohol-related sleep disturbance or alcoholic beverage congeners, and correlated with the intensity of hangover. Healthy heavy drinkers age 21 to 33 (n = 95) participat...
Article
Transdermal scopolamine is commonly used by mariners to prevent or treat seasickness. Most studies indicate that scopolamine administered transdermally via an adhesive patch does not impair performance of skills required to navigate a vessel, but trials have not been conducted testing navigation and ship handling under realistic conditions. The aim...
Article
Full-text available
To determine the incidence and covariates of hangover following a night of moderate alcohol consumption at a targeted breath alcohol level. Data were combined from three randomized cross-over trials investigating the effects of heavy drinking on next-day performance. A total of 172 participants received either alcoholic beverage (mean=0.115 g% brea...
Conference Paper
Background: Residual effects the day after heavy drinking may cause cognitive and physical impairment in functions critical to safety-sensitive occupations. Methods: We conducted a double blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, crossover study of effects of heavy drinking (mean BrAC 0.11 g% 0.01) on next-day sustained attention/reaction time (psycho...
Article
Full-text available
No psychometrically established measure of acute hangover symptoms is published and available to use in experimental investigations. The present investigation combined data across three studies of residual alcohol effects to establish the properties of a new Acute Hangover Scale (AHS) based on symptoms supported in previous lab studies. Professiona...
Article
Full-text available
The effects of an evening of heavy drinking on next-day occupational performance are mixed across studies and have not been investigated for ship-handling performance. Furthermore, it is not known whether the residual effects of alcohol on next-day performance are due to its effects on sleep. Merchant marine cadets (N=61) who had been trained on a...
Article
Full-text available
Current US federal regulations on occupational alcohol use for safety-sensitive jobs do not account for impairment from low doses of alcohol and next day effects of heavy drinking. Research on the effects of low doses of alcohol on neurocognitive and simulated occupational tasks suggests that the current per se level of these regulations is set too...
Article
To guide the development of an intervention to reduce the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) in urban, adolescent girls, we investigated such girls' reasons for deciding to have or not to have sexual intercourse. Consecutive girls >or=14 years of age attending an urban adolescent clinic were invited to complete an anonymous survey ab...
Article
Full-text available
Public policy has treated drinking and boating as though it were analogous to drinking and driving. Accordingly, recent Federal and state laws to prevent drinking and boating have focused solely on alcohol use by the boat operator. This study was designed to determine boaters' knowledge about the epidemiology of boating fatalities and how boaters p...

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