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Family Medicine/Bowen Research Center Staff Receive National Award
Terrell W. Zollinger, Dr.P.H., Professor and Associate Director, Bowen Research Center and senior research investigator, Department of Family Medicine and Jan Petty, Executive Director, Alliance for Health Promotion, were part of a collaborative group that received the first American Public Health Association (APHA) GlaxoSmithKline Partnership for Healthy Children Award at the APHA 129th Annual meeting and exposition in Atlanta, Georgia Collaborators in the Tobacco Free Youth Initiative in Indianapolis project (the Project) have included the Marion County Health Department, hospitals, schools, non-profit groups and foundations. Findings in a 1994 Marion County health assessment showed high rates of tobacco use by children and teens in the Indianapolis area, with an upward trend. The county's death rates related to tobacco use exceeded the state and national rates. In response, Tobacco Free Youth Initiative in Indianapolis project (the Project), was launched in 1997 to reduce the prevalence of tobacco use in participating schools by 10 percent and raise the compliance of tobacco retailers in at least three of the targeted neighborhoods to 75 percent. The Project, which focuses on children in the sixth-through-eighth-grades in an under-served area, is comprised of a comprehensive curriculum called "Lifeskills Training," a field trip to an interactive health education center and a two-day youth leadership camp. The Project also works to implement tobacco prevention advocacy programs and community-based tobacco access law enforcement programs in neighborhoods adjacent to schools. A core group of students who were trained at a leadership camp are now educating adults, their peers and communities on the community effects of tobacco. The county schools system is phasing out its drug education curriculum, replacing it with the Lifeskills Training curriculum. A 1998 survey showed that students who participated in the project interventions were less likely to be current smokers and more likely to avoid spending time with smokers. Plans to expand the Project, now in its fourth year, were recently outlined. The GlaxoSmithKline Partnership for Healthy Children Award was created last year to honor and encourage exceptional work that improves the health status of children. < download report summary PDF now (31K) > This article was reproduced from "Nations Health," vol. 31, no. 8, September 2001 and used with permission from APHA. |
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