The rapid proliferation of health informatics and digital health innovations has revolutionized clinical and research practices. There is no doubt that these fields will continue to have accelerated growth and a substantial impact on population health. However, there are legitimate concerns about how these promising technological advances can lead to unintended consequences such as perpetuating health and health care disparities for underresourced populations. To mitigate this potential pitfall, it is imperative for the health informatics and digital health scientific communities to understand the challenges faced by disadvantaged groups, including racial and ethnic minorities, which hinder their achievement of ideal health. This paper presents illustrative exemplars as case studies of contextually tailored, sociotechnical mobile health interventions designed with community members to address health inequities using community-engaged research approaches. We strongly encourage researchers and innovators to integrate community engagement into the development of data-driven, modernized solutions for every sector of society to truly achieve health equity for all.

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Bupropion is efficacious for smoking cessation independently of a former history of major depression or alcoholism. Increases in depressive symptoms during an initial period of abstinence are associated with a return to smoking.

The reduction of depressive symptoms and cigarette smoking among adolescents are important factors to consider in prevention and treatment efforts focused on adolescent sleep problems.

To examine whether adolescent cigarette smoking predicts the development of depressive symptoms, we used a longitudinal follow-up survey of 6,863 adolescents ages 12 to 18 in the U.S. who did not report notable depressive symptoms at baseline. This study used a self-report measure of six depressive symptoms experienced within the past twelve months at follow-up as the outcome of interest. Results indicated that 11.5% developed notable depressive symptoms at follow-up. There were marked gender differences with 15.3% of girls developing notable depressive symptoms compared to 8.1% of boys. Gender differences in depressive symptoms were consistent across all age groups and were apparent by the age of twelve. For both genders, smoking status was the most significant predictor of developing notable depressive symptoms. Several other risk factors including involvement in organized athletics, availability of social support, and personality characteristics were also found to be associated with development of depressive symptoms. Adolescent cigarette smoking may have marked health consequences in terms of depressive symptoms. The reduction of cigarette smoking among adolescents should be a focus of depression prevention interventions. In addition, the development of gender-specific components of prevention interventions may be warranted.

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In this series of patients undergoing multidisciplinary treatment for chronic pain, immediate treatment effects for a variety of outcome measures were similar or significantly better in smokers compared with nonsmokers.

Few nicotine dependence measures have been developed for smokeless tobacco (ST) users. Existing measures are limited by the requirement to rate the nicotine content of ST brands for which data is scarce or non-existent. We modified the Fagerström Test for Nicotine Dependence (FTND) for ST users, referred to this scale as the FTND-ST, and evaluated its characteristics in a population of 42 ST users. The correlation between the FTND-ST total score and the serum cotinine concentrations was 0.53 (p<0.001). Internal consistency reliability assessed using the coefficient alpha was 0.47. Correlations and the coefficient alpha are similar to those reported for commonly used nicotine dependence measures. Development and refinement of nicotine dependence measures for ST users are essential steps in order to advance the field of ST research.