Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #121135

Ruth, E. Malone, RN, PhD, Center for Tobacco Control Research & Education, University of California, San Francisco, 530 Parnassus, Suite 366, San Francisco, CA 94143-1390 and Gina M. Intinarelli, RN, MSN, School of Nursing, University of California San Francisco, 350 Parnassus Avenue Suite # 150, Box # 0118, San Francisco, CA 94143, 415-353-1660, intinarellig@surgery.ucsf.edu.

While individual nurses do outstanding work, nurses as a group have never played a major leadership role in addressing tobacco at the political level, and have never spoken out collectively in any sustained way to address the tobacco industry, the primary vector of the tobacco disease epidemic. Drawing on internal tobacco company documents research, and incorporating a critical theoretical perspective on education and practice, this presentation shows why tobacco cessation cannot be viewed solely as an individual problem, but must be understood in sociopolitical context. Promoting a nursing agenda on tobacco requires educating (and energizing) nurses about the sociopolitics of tobacco. Because of nurses numbers, class status, political capital and moral authority in society, they are the group of health professionals whose voices are most urgently needed at this historical moment to help avert the impending global tobacco epidemic. The Nightingales, a group involved in activism against the tobacco industry, is discussed as an example of nurses applying findings from research on the tobacco industry to engage nurses in tobacco control activism, research and education.

Learning Objectives:

• See session abstract

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commertial supporters WITH THE EXCEPTION OF State of California Employee.