Last Updated November 4, 2025
Quit the Hit Study
We developed a program called “Quit the Hit” that takes place in direct message groups on Instagram to support vaping cessation among mid to late-stage adolescents aged 13-21. The program was co-created with hundreds of adolescents, and has been evaluated in a randomized controlled trial in California. The study is led by Dr. Pamela Ling in partnership with Dr. Bonnie Halpern-Felsher’s REACH Lab at Stanford University. This study will train community coaches to convene Quit the Hit support groups, and evaluate the effectiveness for nicotine vaping cessation over 6 months. The study takes place with partners in four states (California, Oklahoma, Minnesota, and South Carolina). We will train coaches in each state, and plan to enroll 600 young people who are interested in quitting vaping in the trial, where they are randomized to either Quit the Hit support groups or standard care vaping support resources from the National Cancer Institute website. We are also studying feasible and effective implementation strategies for this program so that it can be disseminated widely in the future. If you are a young person interested in signing up for the study, please visit the study website. If you are an adult who is interested in training to become a coach, please email our study staff at: [email protected]
Effects of Exposure to Secondhand Smoke on Nasal Congestion
Professor Suzaynn Schick is recruiting healthy nonsmokers who are not exposed to SHS in daily life to study the effects of acute exposure to SHS on nasal congestion on both healthy and allergic individuals. We are looking for non-smoking volunteers who are either healthy or who have mild to moderate nasal allergies. You must be between the ages of 18 and 50, able to perform moderate exercise, and have no other serious health problems. The study requires five visits to the Lung Biology Center, located at the San Francisco General Hospital. Visits will be 2-3 hours long and can be scheduled at your convenience Monday through Friday. Visits must be separated by 2-3 weeks, so the entire study will take 8-12 weeks to complete. Payment for the complete study will be $280. If you are interested, and think you may be eligible, please e-mail [email protected] and a description of the study will be forwarded to you.
Lung Function Abnormalities in Fight Attendants Exposed to Secondhand Smoke (SHS)
This is a study on lung function at rest and during exercise in flight attendants who worked in commercial aircraft prior to the ban on cigarette smoking. We compare these results to those obtained in flight attendants who have worked in aircraft since the ban on smoking. We compare the results in both groups to those in sea-level controls who never smoked. Preliminary results suggest that SHS smoke causes damage to the airways and pulmonary capillaries. We are actively recruiting pre-ban, post-ban flight attendants and healthy sea-level controls who are never smokers for these studies. Researchers: Mehrdad Arjomandi, Tad Height, Rita Redberg, and Warren Gold.