TCF Recognized by Benevolink

Melissa Stugart — Thu, 22 May 2008 09:45:48 -0400

The Tidwell Cancer Foundation has been recognized for having a successful profile by Benevolink, one of our fundraising partners. If you haven't checked it out yet, please do at www.benevolink.com. You can shop through this website at no additional cost to you and a percentage of the proceeds can be donated to TCF!

Below is the article they wrote about our organization in their newsletter:

Success Profile
Cancer Center Grows Support Through Benevolink
By utilizing the cut and paste marketing copy located in Benevolink's online toolbox, Tidwell Cancer Foundation quickly got the message out about fundraising through Benevolink to educators, families, staff, volunteers and website visitors. Says Missie Stugart at Tidwell, "the Benevolink Toolbox made it incredibly easy to communicate this great opportunity via our website. We anticipate great results."

Tidwell Cancer Foundation in Columbus GA exists to make a lasting difference in the local community by educating youth about living a tobacco-free lifestyle. Through school-based, anti-tobacco programming like Tidwell's Terrific Kids, they help empower kids to make healthy tobacco-free lifestyle decisions.

View Tidwell Cancer Foundation's Benevolink profile for more information.

All the best,

Missie

Posted to: TCF Recognized by Benevolink

Smokers Marginalized Article

Jack Tidwell — Thu, 22 May 2008 07:47:16 -0400

The Tidwell Terrific Kids Program high schoolers can dig this..... and pass it on to the third graders:

This recent article is another way to understand how uncool smoking is becoming and how people really can influence one another to quit.

High schoolers can dig this and pass it on to 3rd graders. Wow what an impact.

Smokers Get Snuffed Out of Social Circles
By Crystal Phend, Staff Writer, MedPage Today
Published: May 21, 2008
Reviewed by Zalman S. Agus, MD; Emeritus Professor
University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
BOSTON, May 21 -- Whole groups of friends and family members have quit smoking together over the past 30 years while those persons who didn't have risked social marginalization, researchers found.

In a study by the same pair who found obesity to be socially contagious, smokers in the long-running Framingham Heart Study became steadily less popular from 1971 to 2003, with progressively fewer and less important societal ties.

The reason may be that friends and family help one another quit, reported Nicholas A. Christakis, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., of Harvard, and James Fowler, Ph.D., of the University of California San Diego, in the May 22 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
Action Points

* Explain to interested patients that the study suggests that family, friends, and coworkers may be important sources of support and motivation in smoking cessation.

A person in the study was 67% (95% CI 59 to 73) less likely to smoke if their spouse quit, while a friend quitting reduced the odds 36% (95% CI 12 to 55), a sibling quitting decreased a person's chances of smoking by 25% (95% CI 14 to 35) and even a coworker in small firms (those with up to six employees) quitting cut the odds of being a smoker by 34% (95% CI 12 to 55).

Friends with more education influenced one another more than those with less education. Among friends who both had at least one year of college, the chance that one person smoked decreased by 61% (95% CI 28 to 81). The association was not significant among pairs of friends in which at least one person had finished high school or had less than a high school education.

The influence of smoking appeared to reach three degrees of separation among contacts. Study participants connected to a smoker were 61% more likely to smoke than those in a simulated random network whereas the odds were elevated 29% for contacts' contacts and 11% at three degrees of separation.

Also, smokers became increasingly isolated, with connections primarily to other smokers, the researchers noted.

Commented Steven Schroeder, M.D., of the University of California San Francisco, in an accompanying editorial, "The findings that smokers are increasingly peripheral resonate with how we encounter smokers in the United States today, many of whom we see furtively puffing outside their places of employment."

"If these findings apply more broadly -- which appears to be likely -- a further reduction in the burden of smoking will require focusing on people who are socially marginalized and whose social networks may be limited," he said, "and it will require figuring out ways to harness the potent social forces that shape behavior."

Drs. Christakis and Fowler used data from handwritten documents dating to 1971 in the multi-generation Framingham Heart Study. In addition to reporting births, marriages, and other family changes, participants had listed contact information for their closest friends, coworkers, and neighbors.

Because the study was community-based, the researchers were able to link 5,124 participants in an extended network of 53,228 social, familial, and professional ties.

The investigators had previously mined this network to discover that friends were more influential than genes in determining body weight (See: Obesity May Be Contagious Among Friends and Family).

When they analyzed the cohort to see the effect of these ties on smoking behaviors, they found that smokers in 1971 were as likely as nonsmokers to be at the center of their family and circles of friends, which was determined by the number of social ties and popularity of their contacts.

By 2000, though, participants who smoked were more likely than nonsmokers to have fewer and less popular social contacts, pushing them to the periphery of the network.

As expected from national trends during the study period, the prevalence of smoking declined from 65.9% to 22.3% from 1971 to 2003.

Furthermore, the data suggested "people are not gradually stopping smoking at the fringes of clusters of smokers," the investigators said. "The size of the clusters of smokers remained the same across time, suggesting that whole groups of people were quitting in concert."

So decisions to quit smoking were not made in isolation, Drs. Christakis and Fowler said. "Rather they reflect choices made by groups of people connected to each other."

Although it shouldn't be surprising that social cues play into smoking behaviors, the marginalization of smokers does raise some concerns, Dr. Schroeder said.

For example, it may further isolate those with mental illness or substance abuse problems, two groups with among the highest rates of smoking, he said. "Perhaps the strategy of 'love the smoker, hate the smoke' could help these smokers quit while avoiding further stigmatization."

The study was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and by a contract from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute to the Framingham Heart Study.

Neither the researchers nor Dr. Schroeder reported conflicts of interest.

Primary source: New England Journal of Medicine
Source reference:
Christakis NA, Fowler JH "The collective dynamics of smoking in a large social network" N Engl J Med 2008; 358: 2249-58.

Additional source: New England Journal of Medicine
Source reference:
Schroeder S "Stranded in the periphery -- The increasing marginalization of smokers" N Engl J Med 2008; 358: 2284-86.

Posted to: Smokers Marginalized Article

LUNG DAMAGE ARTICLE

Jack Tidwell — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 11:06:36 -0400

To learn about new scientific evidence of lung damage in non-smokers who hang around smokers, go to this informative website. Then quit..... for them.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071126104424.htm

Posted to: LUNG DAMAGE ARTICLE

Board Members

Melissa Stugart — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 12:28:29 -0400

This is a special forum for our board members to interact and communicate with one another.

Posted to: Board Members

Welcome to the TCF Forum!

Melissa Stugart — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 16:05:17 -0500

Hey everyone! This forum was created for our volunteers, board members, and stakeholders to share thoughts and ideas about the program.

I encourage you all to share any stories, news articles, and brainstorms you think of or come across.

All you have to do is register and login. Then you should be able to create new posts and comment on others posts.

Hope to see input from you all shortly!

Posted to: Welcome to the TCF Forum!

Forum posts to 'General Discussion'

TCF Recognized by Benevolink

Smokers Marginalized Article

LUNG DAMAGE ARTICLE

Board Members

Welcome to the TCF Forum!