RESEARCH
Alabama joins a rapidly growing number of states confronting reports of severe illness related to vaping. The Alabama Department of Public Health has announced investigations into five reports of potentially severe lung disease associated with e-cigarette use. Dr. Adrienne Duke, a family and child development specialist with The Alabama Cooperative Extension System, Extension colleagues Leigh Akins and Sallie Hooker, and Auburn University undergraduate researcher Devin Van Cleave recently published a comprehensive article on the risks associated with vaping.
After completing an intensive class on program development, my professor that I was studying under extended a research opportunity to me with the Alabama Cooperative Extension Program that consisted of working with other professionals to publish a document on e-cigarette usage that would be accessible to the community and would receive national attention.
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I was able to work with Dr. Adrienne Duke, Extension Specialist, Ms. Sallie Hooker, a regional extension educator, and Ms. Leigh Akins, a regional extension educator and the lead researcher on vaping literature in the state of Alabama.
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My duties consisted of developing and proposing solutions for e-cigarette usage in adolescents, organizing research articles and literature relevant to the subject material for publication, attending scheduled meetings for discussion of the document being published, editing and synthesizing information, and gathering data and material on the health risks of vaping on the human body.
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A copy of the final published document is listed to the right. If you would like to view the online published article, please click here.