Written by Maggie Bushman: Associate Research Specialist
The American Public Health Association’s (APHA) annual meeting is a spectacle in the academic world. Each year, almost 13,000 attendees gather to present, learn and find inspiration. This year, Marina and Lauren attended the annual conference in Philadelphia.
Both of these SMAHRTeam members are part of the Cannabis Advertising on Social Media (CASM) project. They set out to Philadelphia to present findings from the content analysis of the CASM project titled, “Presence of Sweets in Online Cannabis Marketing.”
“We wanted to gauge interest in the findings that I was presenting,” explained Marina. “I think it will help with thinking about what the next paper is.”
This content analysis evaluated the presence of sweets on cannabis business’ social media marketing. It was discovered that sweets were predominately used when referring to edibles or as an advertisement prop. This practice was common in cannabis social media marketing, but there are currently no restrictions on this type of content.
Marina and Lauren recalled that attendees appeared to be very interested in their topic this year. Marina attended last year, but her study was one of only a few that were related to social media cannabis research. However, APHA 2019 had more on cannabis and youth cannabis use this year.
“It was good that so many of the sessions were related to our marijuana project. They also had information on vaping, vaccines, and tobacco. I went to another session on mass shootings, which is a big topic issue right now,” Lauren said.
Lauren also went on to describe how the cannabis research was presented at APHA. She has attended other conferences and panels that discuss cannabis as a one-sided topic, advocating for legalization. However, at APHA she felt the content was more balanced.
“I liked that it was a really balanced talk, it wasn’t like a debate, but they talked about all sides of the issue,” she said.
Lauren and Marina explained that the conference was relevant to their topic area within SMAHRT, but it was also pertinent to both of their public health backgrounds. Marina and Lauren are our SMAHRTeam members that are pursuing a graduate degree in conjunction with their work on the team. Marina is a PhD student in Population Health Sciences and Lauren works in the Population Health Institute and is pursuing a master’s in Social Work.
In their line of work within SMAHRT and in their graduate degrees, they have had the opportunity to attend many conferences, but APHA is a unique one. The conference is so big that there is a broad range of topic areas, making it a little overwhelming initially. They both suggested that future attendees take the time before the conference to map out what sessions they would like to attend to make it more manageable. However, despite the size of the conference, Marina and Lauren shared some of the aspects of the conference that they enjoyed the most.
“So much of other conferences involve you just sitting there all day, but this one had more diverse activities, like wellness sections. I got free acupuncture, which was amazing, they had a whole film festival and a history walking tour of the city. So I tried to do some different types of things, which some conferences just don’t offer,” said Lauren.
“I really like presenting at this conference because people are really interested in cannabis research. I even talked to some of the same people from last year,” Marina said.
Overall, the APHA 2019 conference was a success!