Penn State University: Penn receives grant to continue tobacco-free campus initiatives
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The American Cancer Society and CVS Health recently
announced that Penn is one of 20 colleges to receive a $20,000 grant as part of
the Tobacco-Free Generation Campus Initiative to accelerate the adoption of
tobacco-free campus policies.
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As the
nation commemorates the Great American Smokeout on Thursday, Nov. 17, Penn
continues to support healthy decision-making among students, faculty, and
staff, and promote numerous tobacco cessation and support networks.
Earlier
this week, the University was recognized for its efforts to create a
tobacco-free campus culture. The ACS and CVS Health announced that Penn is one
of 20 colleges and universities to receive a $20,000 grant, part of the
Tobacco-Free Generation Campus Initiative, a $3.6 million program intended to
accelerate and expand the adoption and implementation of smoke- and
tobacco-free campus policies.
“We are
grateful to be among the recipients of the American Cancer Society/CVS Health
tobacco grant as it recognizes and supports Penn’s commitment to a tobacco free
campus,” says Penn President Amy Gutmann. “This generous grant will greatly aid
the University’s ongoing efforts to effectively address this major public
health epidemic.”
Specifically,
the grant will examine whether removing smoking poles on campus affects
cigarette butt litter, and fund communications materials aimed at students,
faculty, and staff that announce Penn’s tobacco-free policy.
Underscoring
these grant-funded efforts is Penn’s unique approach to addressing the tobacco
epidemic. Guided by Frank Leone, director of the Comprehensive Smoking
Treatment Program and associate professor of medicine at the Perelman School of
Medicine, the University supports tobacco users in efforts to quit and
encourages a shift in attitudes and beliefs about smoking, rather than
penalizing or ostracizing tobacco-users.
“The
argument that we made in the [ACS/CVS Health grant] application is, our school
motto in Latin translates roughly to ‘laws without values are meaningless.’ We
believe that an organization can make as many rules as they want; some people
will follow those rules, other people will not follow the rules, some people
will not know there are rules,” Leone says. “Rules by themselves don’t really
effectively change behavior as much as you would like. Even if they do change
behavior on campus, they don’t have the same downstream impact that we would
like to see.
“We feel
that this approach is really an expression of our values, primarily. It needs
to be consistent with who we are as an organization,” Leone adds.
The
grant was awarded to the Division of Human Resources (HR) and Campus Health and
Student Health Service. Ultimately the tobacco-free campus initiative seeks to
change hearts and minds about tobacco use, underscoring not only the importance
of an individual’s health, but also other value systems that interface with
tobacco use.
This
model, which is a response to what the U.S. Office of the Surgeon General
proposed in 2005 to address tobacco use, recognizes that every epidemic is
about the interplay between biological, social, and cultural norms, and the
environment.
“Every
epidemic has elements in all three of those spheres and you can’t solve an
epidemic by simply focusing on one sphere or another to the exclusion of the
other two. You have to deal with how all three spheres interact with each
other,” Leone explains. “That’s what the University of Pennsylvania is
attempting to do by involving HR, by involving Student Health, by involving
Public Safety, by involving Facilities and Real Estate Services, by involving
the researchers, by involving the clinical staff.”
Jack
Heuer, Penn’s vice president for Human Resources, says the grant recognizes the
collaboration between offices that touch the lives of everyone on campus.
“The
Penn policy is, we’re really committed to a healthy, safe work and learning
environment,” Heuer says. “Every person working on this campus can be an
example to the students who are studying and living on this campus. The removal
of tobacco by the individuals working here is a very positive reinforcement
message.
“This
grant really supports practical ways that we can address the tobacco epidemic,”
Heuer adds. “It gets us to the same point without, in some ways, pointing a
finger or blaming anybody.”
The
efforts to support behavior change can take time and require a deliberate,
phased approach, says Max King, associate vice provost for health and academic
services.
“What we
want to do is rather than force people to change, we want to go through a
process of change. If people are persuaded to change, behavior is gradual and
not pre-scribed,” King says. “In order to do that, you need to have a phased
approach so that gradually the campus embraces the notion of, ‘well, it’s
always been this way.”
The need
to reduce tobacco use on campus is still acute among students, says Ashlee
Halbritter, director of Campus Health. Hookah use, while decreasing, is still
an issue because many students don’t see that activity as tobacco use. She
notes Campus Health is also seeing an uptick in electronic cigarette use, and
many students continue to smoke socially.
“All of
the data shows that tobacco use becomes a habit sometime before age 26, which
is where most of our student population is—which is why this is just as an
important issue among students as it is for faculty and staff, because if we
want to prevent further tobacco use, we need to stop it now in students,”
Halbritter says.
Trevor
Glenn, a junior Biological Basis of Behavior major in the College of Arts &
Sciences, serves on the Student Health Service board as an undergraduate
representative, and says things like hookahs and vaping are considered socially
acceptable.
“Many
times when walking to class on Locust Walk or around campus I’ve seen people
smoking or have noticed that the ground was peppered with cigarette butts. …
There’s no active stigma against doing things like vapes or hookah,” Glenn
says. “By implementing a tobacco-free campus policy, and by continuing to
provide free smoking cessation services, Penn has taken a huge step to building
a healthier and cleaner campus. It does make sense that people are more likely
to adhere to a policy if it’s through a culture change rather than a mandate.”
Attempting
to create a culture of compliance around this issue means that the community
has to buy into it and act to keep Penn a tobacco-free campus, says Halbritter.
Leone
agrees: “Tobacco use is a behavioral epidemic and as responsible members of a
world community, people at the University of Pennsylvania have a responsibility
to show some leadership in reevaluating, in assessing assumptions we make.
[We’re] changing the conversation just a little. You place the emphasis not on
self but on community. It’s a really simple idea but [it] runs so counter to
how people think about this problem.”
Source:
www.penncurrent.upenn.edu
