UCSF to Host World No Tobacco Day on May 28
Steven Schroeder
To promote awareness about the health hazards of tobacco, UCSF will bring together its own faculty experts, staff and students to recognize World No Tobacco Day on Friday, May 28.
The campus community is invited to attend UCSF’s World No Tobacco Day event, from noon to 1 p.m., in Cole Hall, on the Parnassus campus.
At World No Tobacco Day at UCSF, Steven A. Schroeder, MD, director of the Smoking Cessation Leadership Center, will host the event. For the past 40 years, Schroeder, Distinguished Professor in Health and Health Care, has worked to engage the medical community in helping people kick the nicotine habit.
Last November, the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) presented Schroeder with the David E. Rogers Award, which recognizes a medical school faculty member “who has made major contributions to improving the health and health care of the American people.” In addition to these pursuits, Schroeder has been on the editorial board of the New England Journal of Medicine since 1994.
Tobacco addiction causes 438,000 deaths in the United States each year, making it the leading preventable cause of death. In addition, some 8.6 million
Americans live with serious smoking-related illness.
The theme of World No Tobacco Day 2010 is “Gender and Tobacco with an Emphasis on Marketing to Women.”
Stacey Anderson, PhD, assistant adjunct professor, UCSF Social and Behavioral Sciences, will discuss tobacco marketing designed to appeal to women throughout the 20th century. She will consider Big Tobacco’s newer strategies for targeting women to use tobacco today.
“Widespread knowledge of tobacco harms, shifting social norms, increasing regulations, and the growth of new communications media have changed the form and content of the messages tobacco companies attempt to communicate to women and girls,” said Anderson. “The goal, however, has remained the same: exploit women’s psychosocial needs in order to increase tobacco companies’ profits.”
Anderson will discuss current challenges and opportunities to improve public health.
Rebecca Schane, MD, CTTS, who works in the UCSF Division of Pulmonary/Critical Care Medicine and is a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, will look at cessation as an under-used tool for the treatment of chronic disease in her presentation, titled “Treating Tobacco Dependence as Primary Therapy.”
She will discuss smoking cessation as a tool for primary therapy and disease prevention.
“When our patients become acutely ill, treatment of their nicotine addiction tends to be ignored,” said Schane. “Cessation can outperform many of the common therapies used for treatment of cardiovascular disease, hypertension and chronic obstructive disease, as well as improve outcomes and prognosis in patients who have cancer.”
Suzanne Harris, RN, CTTS, from the UCSF Tobacco Education Center, will be available at the May 28 event to answer questions about the services of the Tobacco Education Center (TEC). These services are available to anyone from the UCSF community, including patients. Referrals can be made by providers as well as participants. Those who attend the event also can learn about the Cessation Group Program, Relapse Prevention Support Group and individual consultations.
Information tables will be set up at the Medical Sciences Building lobby from 8 to 10:30 a.m. and 12 to 1 p.m.
For information about the World No Tobacco event, please contact Karen Williams, Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, at 415/476-4683.
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