|
Closing the Loop
Extend the learning about tobacco prevention and cessation beyond your presentation by suggesting follow-up activities specific to your audience.
For Children and Teens
Ask them to:
- Make antitobacco posters and hang them in their schools and in stores around their town or neighborhood.
- Talk with police about cracking down on tobacco sales to minors. Have them visit local cigarette retailers, and remind them that citizens want them to refuse to sell tobacco to minors.
- Create a Web site with stories about how people have said no to tobacco or how they quit.
- Write and design antitobacco ads for their school papers.
- Write a letter to the editor of their local newspaper about smoking/chewing tobacco use by kids.
- Work with Chamber of Commerce officials to create an antitobacco booth at local sales days. Or get a sponsoring business, such as a coffee shop, to let them leave literature that they create on a counter for customers.
- Contact local women's organizations, such as a woman's club, junior league, or business and professional women's association, to see how girls and teens can work with them on antitobacco programs. Girls can be very effective speakers when they are talking to women who could be their mothers!
- Ask a teacher or a school nurse if they can create an antitobacco program for younger kids. For instance, a group of middle school girls could do some activities with fourth or fifth graders.
For Women
Ask them to:
- Create a support group for women trying to quit or women trying to get loved ones to quit. They can exchange phone numbers, e-mail addresses, etc. Give them yours as well so that they have an expert and a compassionate touch-point as they move forward.
- Contact women who may have a tobacco-related disease who would be willing to speak to girls about the dangers of tobacco use.
- Call the local schools, and see how they can help educators work with children to combat tobacco use.
- Work with local sports groups, such as softball/baseball leagues, hockey, and others, to include antismoking information as part of their training and practice.
For Health-care Professionals/Students
Ask them to:
- Volunteer to make presentations themselves using Make the Choice: Tobacco or Health?
- Consider starting a support group for health-care professionals who are trying to quit tobacco use.
- Push their teachers to include more about smoking and chewing prevention and cessation in medical/nursing/health professions curricula.
- Contact you with new research so that you can extend your professional relationship in this area.
|
