We are seeking to hire 5-6 research assistants (RA) to work on a short-term research project designed to assess the neighborhood-level determinants of tobacco use and health among young adults in the San Francisco Bay Area. The goal of this study, which is funded by the National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities, is to collect environmental data in selected neighborhoods in Alameda and San Francisco Counties in order to better understand how the areas in which people live may influence their health behaviors.

RAs hired for this study will be primarily responsible for data collection and may also be involved in pre-collection preparations and post-collection data entry, coding or analysis. The main activities of the project will include:

1. Spatial video data collection in selected neighborhoods – RAs will drive/ride through selected neighborhoods street by street with specially equipped handheld video cameras mounted on their vehicle designed to capture GPS coordinates and video imagery of the built environment
2. Sketch mapping and qualitative interviews with neighborhood key informants

3. Neighborhood audits – RAs will walk around selected neighborhoods and collect information on the built environment (e.g. open air e-cigarette ads) and tobacco retail outlets within the neighborhoods
4. Organizing an in-house spatial data infrastructure combining data collected in this study with individual-level data previously collected, publicly-available data and databases maintained by colleagues of project investigators