The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA

Abstract #63436

Linette M. Escobar, MA¹, Patricia Erwin, MPH², and Yin Yan Leung, MPH². (1) SUNSET Russian Tobacco Education Project, Bay Area Community Resources, 1351 24th Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94122, (415) 682-1963, lesunset@hotmail.com, (2) Newcomers Health Program, San Francisco Department of Public Health, 1490 Mason Street #107, San Francisco, CA 94133

Imagine you lived under the Soviet System where smoking was the norm and have now immigrated to San Francisco for greater freedoms. You see a sign asking you to report neighbors to the State who aren’t complying with tobacco laws. A tobacco education “campaign” asks you to sign a “pledge” sheet. By using strategies and words reminiscent of the Soviet era, these proven public health strategies could alienate these Russian-speakers. Because there had been no groundwork in this community, we needed to “re-interpret” our workplan to make it culturally appropriate to this population. We stepped back and assessed the community and planned our strategies through key informants, focus groups, an Advisory Board, a literature review and hiring staff from the target population. With this approach, we learned best approaches for this community, established connections, and based on this decided to implement culturally and linguistically appropriate community awareness campaigns and educational workshops. We will explain how we reached this population, designed our program from a new angle, and implemented a media campaign and educational and cessation workshops. The key points of what worked, what didn’t and our approaches will be illustrated by using our project as a case study. Participants will gain knowledge about the unique perspective of this specific immigrant population and learn methods for approaching communities that have had limited tobacco awareness. Advocates working in ethnic communities or cessation will be able to use our program and lessons learned as a model for their work.

Learning Objectives:

• 3. Describe at least two cultural issues around tobacco impacting the Russian-speaking population of San Francisco
  7. Identify at least three steps to determining cultural appropriateness of materials
  11. List at least two strategies for approaching refugee or immigrant communities that have had little tobacco education

Keywords: Tobacco, Immigrants

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.