NOV/DEC 2004
Volume 10 - No. 4
Research Activities at a Featured Program
SRNT Newsletter
November/December 2004, Volume 10, Number 4
In the Spotlight
The final report of the Women, Tobacco, and Cancer
Working Group, Women, Tobacco, and Cancer: An Agenda for
the 21st Century, is now available in PDF format online at
http://planning.cancer.gov/whealth/reports/wtobacco.pdf
. The report was presented by the Co-chairs to the Advisory Committee
to the Director (ACD) of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in
a teleconference July 27, 2004. Following discussion, the
ACD members voted to accept the report, with subsequent release
to the public. Please feel free to share the report with all
those who might be interested and link to appropriate places on your websites. SRNT Members
Ellen Gritz and Tracy Orleans co-chaired the effort, so be sure to thank them for their hard work
when you have the opportunity.
Belinda Borrelli, Associate Professor in the Brown Medical School Center for Behavioral and Preventive Medicine, has been awarded a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The project is entitled "Motivating Latino Parents of Kids with Asthma to Quit Smoking." The major goal of this project is to contrast the efficacy of two theoretically based smoking cessation interventions for Latino parents of children with asthma and to compare key mechanisms of behavior change within and across theoretical perspectives.
Tony George of the Yale University School of Medicine was recently awarded two NIH Grants. The National Institute on Drug Abuse is funding his Independent Scientist (K02) Award entitled "Translational Studies on Smoking and Schizophrenia", as well as an R01 entitled "Selegiline and Smoking Cessation".
NIDA sponsored Junior Investigator Travel Awards to CPDD: 2005 College on Problems of Drug Dependence Women & Gender Junior Investigator Travel Awards . There is accumulating evidence that the antecedents, consequences, and mechanisms of drug abuse and dependence are not identical in males and females and that gender may be an important variable in treatment and prevention outcomes. To foster research on women and gender differences by junior investigators in all areas of drug abuse research (both human and animal), the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) announces the availability of special NIDA travel awards for junior investigators whose abstract on women or gender differences is accepted for either a poster or oral session at the 2005 annual meeting of the College on Problems of Drug Dependence in Orlando, Florida, June 18-23. For more information about CPDD and its annual meeting (including abstract forms), please visit the CPDD web site at http://www.cpdd.org. Eligibility: Graduate and medical students, post-doctoral students, medical residents, and investigators who are no more than five years past the doctoral degree or residency are eligible. Applicant must be first author on the CPDD abstract. Minority investigators and male investigators are especially encouraged to apply. Federal employees are ineligible. Priority may be given to those who have not received this award in the past. Application Procedures: Follow the CPDD instructions for abstract submission. Then mail a copy of the full abstract form that you submitted to CPDD to: Dr. Cora Lee Wetherington, National Institute on Drug Abuse, 6001 Executive Boulevard, Room 4282, MSC 9555, Bethesda, MD 20892-9555 (For overnight mail: Room 4257, Rockville, MD 20852). Include your curriculum vitae and a cover letter indicating your eligibility and your interest in pursuing research on women and/or gender differences. Please do not fold your application materials. Applications for this award must be postmarked by January 18, 2005. For additional information about this annual award, contact: Dr. Cora Lee Wetherington at 301-435-1319 or at wetherington@nih.gov.
Leading the Way Helping our Patients be Tobacco Free is a comprehensive tobacco control curriculum specifically designed for dental hygiene faculty. The inception of the curriculum was started in the Spring of 2001 when Southern Illinois University Carbondale (SIUC) was award a grant from the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) to establish a campus-wide tobacco control program. The curriculum came out of the establishment of a tobacco control program for the SIUC dental hygiene program.
Leading the Way includes an introduction and six modules: Past, Present and Future; Addiction, Dependence and Disease; Cessation and Prevention; Pharmacotherapies; Knowledge to Practice: Clinical Application; Advocacy & Prevention in the Community. The curriculum is highly adaptable and can be used as a single tobacco control unit or infused into existing courses such as pharmacology, periodontology, oral pathology and community health. The curriculum includes over one hundred references and is regularly updated to reflect current research.
The curriculum includes a: Faculty Guide (learning objective, learning activities, assessment tools and references for that module.), Power Point slides that include numerous visuals to increase student interest and participation and an extensive Tool Box. The curriculum is available free of charge at http://www.siu.edu/~hcp/tobacco.
The American Cancer Society, Illinois Division, awarded a $250,000, three year grant to SRNT member, Joan M. Davis and a team of researchers at Southern Illinois University Carbondale to evaluate the effectiveness of the curriculum using the Theory of Planned Behavior. A total of twelve community college dental hygiene faculty members will receive training in the Leading the Way curriculum. Faculty, dental hygiene students as well as patients will be surveyed over a two year period to determine the impact of the tobacco curriculum on clinician attitudinal change and actual clinical tobacco control efforts.
Collaboration is being sought to adapt this basic curriculum to other allied health programs that are specifically located in two year community college settings as well as the dental school setting.
Questions about Leading the Way materials should be addressed to davisdh@siu.edu.