Smoke-free multiunit housing: A review of the conference abstracts, theses/dissertations and online resources

Little research regarding intervention strategies used to engage and support multiunit housing (MUH) property owners to establish or strengthen smokefree policies can be found in the peer-reviewed literature. However, many practitioners and researchers present findings at conferences and in theses or dissertations and online resources are abundant. To summarize the scientific evidence beyond peer-reviewed journal articles, we conducted a grey literature review of conference abstracts, theses/dissertations, and smoke-free multi-unit housing program websites.

The methods complement and expand a recently published systematic review of peer-reviewed publications (Snyder et al, 2015), with similar search terms, combining smokefree and housing terms. In addition, the literature had to include some form of intervention around smoke-free MUH policies.

The key word search from 20 conferences dating 2009 to 2014 found a total of 151 abstracts and subsequently 51 eligible abstracts. Conference websites were searched for additional materials and authors of each abstract were contacted via email for additional materials such as presentations, handouts, and posters. A Proquest search yielded one eligible dissertation.

Two abstracters used an abstraction form adapted from the Guide to Community Preventive Services data abstraction form for both the dissertation and the conference abstracts.

Websites of smoke-free multi-unit housing programs as listed in the Global smoke-free MUH directory were searched to identify current smoke-free multi-unit housing efforts and their evaluations.

Preliminary results indicate that most of the work focuses on the development and feasibility of strategies and activities to promote smoke-free MUH. However, few evaluations of short-term, intermediate, or long-term outcomes are available.