April 30, 2003

Contact:
Jennifer Meriam, Director (954) 262-5355
Mike Laderman, Associate Director, (954) 262-5354
Mara Kiffin, Coordinator, (954) 262-5350

NSU Medical Students to Provide Tobacco Education in Broward Middle Schools

FORT LAUDERDALE, FL --Nearly 200 students from Nova Southeastern University’s College of Osteopathic Medicine (NSU-COM) will visit Broward County middle schools on Friday, May 2 to provide tobacco prevention education to young people as a service to the community.

The NSU-COM students expect to reach an estimated 10,000 young people at 30 Broward middle schools with valuable information encouraging them to avoid, or to stop, using tobacco. To date, more than 20,000 young people in Broward County have been educated by NSU students about the dangers of smoking through this project.

First year NSU medical student, Olga Martinez, a graduate of Rickards Middle School, will be going back to her alma mater on Friday to speak to students about the dangers of smoking.

“I asked if I could be sent to Rickards because I attended school there and I felt I could relate to the students,” said Martinez. “I’m looking forward to returning to the school with this important message.”

Tobacco Education Day is part of a required 13-hour course that was first instituted at NSU-COM in 2001. The course is designed to help future physicians identify ways to prevent harmful health effects resulting from the use of tobacco products. On April 8, NSU Pharmacy students visited area high schools, where they reached approximately 7,000 Broward County High School students.

Through this course, medical students receive training on a wide variety of issues, including the pharmacology of tobacco use, dependence and addiction, as well as behavioral techniques in smoking prevention and cessation.

Cigarette smoking is widely recognized as one of the leading causes of preventable deaths in the world and contributes to approximately 430,000 deaths in the U.S. each year. In Florida alone, where an estimated 2.5 million adults and 350,000 teens use tobacco products, the public health
costs attributed to tobacco are enormous.

To address this pressing issue, NSU-COM’s nationally recognized Area Health Education Center (AHEC) Program has collaborated with the AHEC Programs of three other Florida medical schools to develop and adopt tobacco cessation and prevention education as an integral part of the medical school curriculum.

A complete list of middle schools and teachers participating is available from Steve Bronsburg at (954)262-1588. For additional information please contact: Dr. Steven Zucker, Associate Dean for Community Affairs and AHEC Program Director; or Steve Bronsburg, M.H.S.A, AHEC Assistant Director for Programs and Services at Nova Southeastern University, College of Osteopathic Medicine, Area Health Education Center (AHEC) Program (954) 262-1588.