The puzzles of smoking inequalities and social network dynamics among adolescents

Smoking is the leading preventable cause of premature mortality and morbidity globally. Although smoking prevalence is decreasing, smoking inequalities persist in Sweden as well as in most Western countries.

As smoking inequalities emerge during adolescence and persists into adulthood, tobacco control interventions for adolescents are needed to tackle this problem.

Vast research showed that social networks are powerful factors explaining smoking behaviour, but it is still unclear how they may contribute to maintaining inequalities.

This project will generate new knowledge on how interventions targeting social networks can contribute to reducing smoking prevalence and inequalities among adolescents.

For this purpose, I will employ state-of-the-art network analysis methods, namely, stochastic-actor oriented models and agent-based simulation. The envisioned project contains three interrelated work packages.

First, it will investigate whether socioeconomic and ethnic groups have different norms towards smoking by looking at the co-evolution of popularity and smoking status in different socioeconomic and ethnic groups.

Second, it will ask who are the relevant actors for different socioeconomic and ethnic groups who could potentially change smoking behaviour.

Finally, this project will build an empirically calibrated agent-based model (based on the results of the previous two work packages) which simulates the possible consequences of different types of interventions on smoking prevalence and inequalities.

My project will arguably foster policy implementation in Sweden and beyond, and help to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 3 (aiming to improve health) and 10 (aiming to reduce inequalities). It will be carried out at the Institute for Analytical Sociology, Linköping University, under the supervision of Prof.

Karoly Takacs.

In this FORTE-project, I will further establish my own research line in population health employing social network analysis toolkits.