Half of the 400,000 deaths from coronary heart disease predicted in the United States in 2010 could be avoided if people ate healthier food and stopped smoking, according to research published Monday.

The study of cardiovascular risk factors published in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization (WHO) said improvements in cardiovascular health had stalled since the 1990s because of a dramatic rise in obesity and diabetes.

The number of heart disease fatalities in the United States could be halved if “one smoker in two in the United States stopped smoking”, taking the proportion of smokers down from 25 percent to 12 percent of the population, WHO official Laragh Gollogly told AFP.

Read more »

Postpartum Period Is Prime Time to Teach New Parents About Smoking Cessation, Researchers Say

WebMD Health News – With some gentle prodding, new parents can be motivated to make more attempts to quit smoking, a new study says.

The trick seems to be getting pregnant women and new moms and dads to understand the dangers of secondhand smoke to unborn and newborn babies, researchers say in the March issue of Pediatrics, which appeared online Feb. 1.

The researchers, including Jonathan Winickoff, MD, MPH, and colleagues from Harvard Medical School, enrolled 101 parents of newborns delivered at Massachusetts General Hospital from February 2005 through April 2006.  All participants were smokers or had recently quit.

The participants were randomly assigned to two groups. Half received no contact between the initial survey to participate in the study and a follow-up survey three months later.

Read more »

Pre and Post-Surveys are available for download to assess changes in attitudes and beliefs of youth before and after viewing the Nasty video. Click here to access. If you need help in analyzing outcomes, please contact Cheryl Eason at the DC Department of Health, Tobacco Control Program, at cheryl.eason@dc.gov. To receive your copy of Nasty, contact us.

January 12, 2010. Washington, DC. The District now has the lowest smoking prevalence ever recorded in the District’s history. In the past three years, the number of District smokers has significantly decreased and the number of District smokers seeking assistance in quitting has significantly increased, with a 500 percent increase in calls to the quitline since 2006.

In 2006, the DC Department of Health, the American Lung Association of DC and the American Cancer Society jointly launched DC Tobacco Free Families, a three year campaign to reduce tobacco use prevalence among District residents.  The comprehensive $10 million campaign, combined with the implementation of progressive tobacco prevention and control policies, such as a doubling of the cigarette tax and a comprehensive smoke-free air law, contributed to the decline in the District’s single most preventable cause of death. This finding, among other impacts of the campaign, is presented in a recent evaluation report for this tobacco settlement funded initiative.

Read more »

Parents urged to establish tobacco free homes and cars to protect children.

January 12, 2010, Washington, D.C. – What do roach motels, mothballs, and battery acid have in common with cigarette smoke? All contain the same poisons also found in secondhand smoke. This is one of the primary reasons the District has banned smoking in all public and private workplaces. In observance of Poison Prevention Awareness Month, the DC Tobacco Free Families Campaign (DCTFF) is launching a metro transit campaign urging parents and guardians to keep secondhand smoke out their homes and cars for the safety of children.

Read more »