Sarah Jackson
Sarah is a Principal Research Fellow in the UCL Alcohol and Tobacco Research Group. Her work focuses on evaluating the effectiveness of smoking cessation aids and interventions on an individual and population level. Key advances resulting from her recent work include an evaluation of the real-world effectiveness of all the major quitting aids; meta-analysis of relapse from smoking cessation pharmacotherapies; quantification of the decline in cigarette consumption in England; evaluation of a London-based cessation campaign; analysis of effects of e-cigarette use; and investigation of smoking and Covid-19 relevant outcomes (e.g. infection and vaccine intentions).
Sarah communicates the latest science and advocates for evidence-based policy and practice through engagement with policy-makers, healthcare professionals, and the public. She sits on Action on Smoking and Health’s advisory council, the London Smoking Cessation Transformation Programme board, and is an academic editor at Addiction.
Social housing: smoking hot-spots
Presentation link: Social housing: smoking hot-spots (Impact prize, 2019)
Smoking prevalence in England has fallen dramatically since the 1970s, but to a lesser extent in those with greater social disadvantage. Social housing has previously been identified as a ‘hot-spot’ for smoking with substantially higher prevalence than other housing tenures. However, it was not clear to what extent this high smoking rate stemmed from other factors; or how far it reflects lower motivation to quit among smokers, greater difficulty quitting or both. This talk will summarise key findings from a large-scale, comprehensive survey of smoking and quitting behaviour in relation to housing tenure. Potential strategies to reduce this inequality will be discussed.
This work is funded by Cancer Research UK.