Project overview
Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis are using agent-based modeling to study innovative policies in the retail setting and their impact in different types of communities, especially those with low-income and minority populations. Data from the Big City Tobacco Control and Retailer Density & Disease projects help inform model development for Tobacco Town by adding current and realistic tobacco retailer characteristics, tobacco use patterns, and user behaviors.
What’s New
Check out our new Tobacco Swamps interactive dashboard. You can use these tools to show how retail interventions could affect the tobacco retailer landscape and tobacco use behaviors.
Co-Leaders
Douglas Luke and Ross Hammond
“The Tobacco Town study is exciting because the computer models will help us to better understand how retail policies actually operate to improve community health. In turn, communities will learn how to tailor these policies to meet their particular tobacco control needs.” — Douglas Luke
Products related to this project
Shaping the built environment for tobacco to reduce retailer density and resident-to-retailer proximity in 30 big US cities
Veronica Chaitan from our WashU team shared this presentation as part of an ASPiRE panel at the Society for Research on Nicotine & Tobacco 2023 Annual Meeting in San Antonio, Texas on March 3. See the presentation slides. [...]
Draining the tobacco swamps: Shaping the built environment to reduce tobacco retailer proximity to residents in 30 big US cities
An ASPiRE team led by Todd Combs combined geospatial data on residential and tobacco retailer density in our CAB cities and found that a large majority of urban residents live in tobacco swamps – neighborhoods where there is a glut of tobacco retailers. Their study, published in Health & Place, simulated the effects of tobacco [...]
Tobacco Retailer Density and Proximity: What’s the difference and how to talk about it
This presentation was delivered by Todd Combs at the CDC OSH National Tobacco Control Program Awardee Meeting in 2022. [...]
Tobacco Swamps Dashboard
This interactive dashboard has maps for all 30 cities represented the ASPiRE Community Advisory Board. Tobacco control programs and other stakeholders can explore and compare projections for retailer density policies within and across the CAB cities. [...]
Menthol restrictions coupled with limits on retailer density may boost cigarette cost, reduce disparities
A brief on research using the Tobacco Town computer model, which found that combination of retail policies can increase cigarette costs, thereby reducing disparities. [...]
Development of a computational modeling laboratory for examining tobacco control policies: Tobacco Town
A brief summarizing a paper describing the use of a computer model to test the effect of retail restrictions on retailer density, the cost of cigarettes, and the distance customers travel to buy cigarettes. The paper concluded that combining restrictions on menthol sales and retailer density could increase costs in low-income areas, and that the [...]
Development of a computational modeling laboratory for examining tobacco control policies: Tobacco Town
A paper suggesting that agent-based modeling may be an effective way to test the impact of retail-based tobacco. The paper concludes that context matters: limiting access to tobacco through retailer density reduction has varying results depending on community type. [...]
Tobacco Town: Computational Modeling for Studying Retailer Density Reduction Strategies
A presentation describing agent-based modeling and its use in studying tobacco retail policy implementation and its effect on retail density and cost. [...]