StateCollaborations between states and priority population groups are extremely critical for ensuring effective tobacco control programs and policies. Here are recent examples from the National Networks for Tobacco Control and Prevention: With Support from the State of Florida, NAATPN Delivers Strong Anti-tobacco Message to Community Members03/29/2012 Jacksonville, FL - According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, tobacco-related diseases kill more African Americans each year than car crashes, AIDS, murders and drug and alcohol abuse combined. In response to this, Edward Waters College (EWC), Florida's oldest independent institution of higher learning as well as the state's first institution established for the education of African Americans, received a grant from the State fo Florida to bring together health education experts in a workshop seeking ways to curb smoking in the community. This workshop featured keynote speaker Kara Endsley, Program Manager for the National African American Tobacco Prevention Network. Endsley was contacted to help provide the historical significance of tobacco in African American communities, as well as provide insight into strategies that could help community members quit. A combination of historical, cultural, geographical and economic factors comes into play when examining the presence of tobacco in African American communities. As slaves working in tobacco fields, they smoked to ease the pain. Today as consumers, certain brands are marketed towards the community. These factors and others contribute to generations of African American smokers. "The key to breaking the smoking addiction is to provide affordable, easily accessible no-smoking programs at the community level," Endsley said. Some of these may include free no-smoking programs in churches and schools in African American neighborhoods and promoting no-smoking policies in public places. In addition to these efforts, Endsley stressed the need for more information and education about the harms of smoking and the tactics used to target these products to African American communities. Over 100 participants attended to hear NAATPN's strong anti-tobacco messages, including students, administrators, cessation counselors and Florida State Health Department staff. Kara Endsley was featured in a recent article in "The Florida Times Union." Read the full article here. By: National African American Tobacco Prevention Network (NAATPN)
National Native Network partners with Washington State to provide technical assistance03/22/2012 Due to funding reductions, Washington State does not directly fund tribes in the state. However, through a collaboration with the American Indian Health Commission (AIHC), a group of representatives of the 29 federally recognized tribes in the state, Washington is working to enhance Healthy Native Communities and to support tribes in making policy, systems and environmental changes to include commercial tobacco control and prevention. To support these efforts in Washington State, the National Native Network has played a key role in providing technical assistance in the following ways:
Additionally, the National Native Network provided two recently published policy briefs. These publications list clear action items that tribes can take toward commercial tobacco control and prevention through policy implementation. These documents are available for download below:
Future collaboration between the National Native Network and Washington State includes a potential on-site presentation to help raise awareness of commercial tobacco policies in Indian Country and to offer the wealth of resources developed by the network.
Addressing Dual Tobacco Use in West Virginia: Expert Panel Convened in Charleston, West Virgina02/03/2012 Break Free Alliance, in conjunction with the West Virginia (WV) Prevention Research Center and the WV Bureau for Public Health's Division of Tobacco Prevention (DTP), convened an expert panel of twenty-four State and National tobacco prevention specialists, researchers, policy makers and others in Charleston, WV on December 13, 2011. For several years now, WV has known of a problem with dual tobacco use, that being defined as cigarette smokers who are also using spit or smokeless tobacco products. Various tobacco use services (i.e., BRFSS and the WV Adult Tobacco Survey) continue to show an increasing prevalence of these dual tobacco users in WV. It was determined by the DTP to convene a one-day long expert panel to further explore the worsening problem of dual tobacco use in WV. The goals for this meeting were to:
During the expert panel meeting, a facilitated presentation of specifics on dual tobacco use in WV was presented by both State-based and CDC representatives. Invited panelists then shared their specific knowledge of the problem as it relates to their professional knowledge. Throughout the course of the meeting, panelists also contributed in facilitated workgroups to identify and set priorities. Finally, panelists worked to concur on specific recommendations. The final report and recommendations are scheduled to be published by late March 2012. Stay tuned! By Bruce Adkins, M.S., PA - Director of the WVBPH's Division of Tobacco Prevention and Break Free Alliance Coordinating Council Vice-Chair (article originally posted here)
Utilizing partnerships to build and sustain the movement in Arkansas11/30/2011 Greetings from Little Rock Arkansas, where we are conducting another Cultural Competency training focused on assisting programs in developing effective Strategies to reach and serve LGBT communities. As many of you know, one of the Network's most requested trainings is our Cultural Competency training, "Skills Building to Reach and Serve LGBT Disparity Populations." Whenever we give a training, we try to identify local LGBT individuals, programs and services to assist us and provide both a local perspective on the LGBT climate in that state or region, but also a local community link for participants to reach out to. This got us thinking about ways that we could continue to utilize our national partnerships to build and sustain the movements established when we travel, as well as conduct trainings and technical assistance. So, we are pleased to announce our formalized policy around trainings and technical assistance which utilizes our national partners and establishes solid community access points when we conduct trainings. So now, anytime we are requested to do trainings we will reach out directly to our partners both CenterLink and Equality Federation to establish local community access points to integrate into the training. Although we have been doing this to some extent independently, actually formalizing the process of working with our partners will ensure that we are providing trusted LGBT based resources and information to participants. Each groups membership base provides unique perspective in working with the community and will strengthen our partnership and ensure more local LGBT resources are shared during the presentation. Here in Arkansas we put our new policy to work with Kat Krisp, of the Center for Artistic Revolution, which is a member of Equlity Federation. I met with Kat and toured their facility to gain a better undersetanding of the resources they provided locally and we together finalized our game plan for the training. Kat joined us all day yseterday for the training, and was an amazing resource on Arkansas LGBT issues and perspective. I could not have asked for a better training yesterday and was so pleased to have been invited to Arkansas. There is a lot of support for LGBT inclusion in Arkansas, and I am proud of the movement starting there. As a state in the Bible Belt, they expressed some unique challenges, but the individuals in the room want to make a difference for their community as a whole and the sense of enthusiasm for LGBT inclusion into all of their work was magical. I want to thank the Minority Initiative Sub-Recipient Grant Office at University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, which is MSA established agency to provide adminstrative oversight and program direction for the portion of the Arkansas Department of Health and Human Services Tobacco Prevention and Cessation fund designed to target Arkansas' minority population, for allowing me the opportunity to be a part of such an amazing movement in Arkansas. Their leadership is outstanding, and I feel there will be some more great changes for inclusion of LGBT communities in the future. By Gustavo Torrez, Program Manager, The Network for LGBT Health Equity (article originally posted here)
Do you have a state collaboration story you would like to share? If so, please tell us your story! |
Smoke-Free Policies: Protecting Tribal Sovereignty and Community Health