What is the key demographic using the increasingly popular flavor capsule cigarettes? How does internet alcohol marketing influence underage drinking? Are TV parental ratings really effective guides for parents? These are some of the questions that are studied at the C. Everett Koop Institute at Dartmouth College, NH. The Institute focuses on corporate influences on health. In particular, the researchers study the effects of corporate practices and marketing of harmful consumer products including tobacco, alcohol and junk food.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe work at The Koop Institute is really important. As citizens and consumers, people have a right to know how their interactions with products and outside influences will affect their health. But we can\u2019t all be experts and so we rely on institutions like The Koop Institute to figure out what those impacts are and educate us,\u201d said Sarah Heatherton, who works at the Institute as a \u2018Koop scholar\u2019. The Koop Scholars are young student interns who spend a year or two at the Institute after completing their undergraduate education. The internship offers students a taste of research, and allows them to learn techniques and develop skills. Many of them are introduced to the work of The Koop Institute through a Dartmouth psychology course called Adolescent Risk Behaviors <\/em>taught by Dr. James Sargent, Director of the Institute and an expert on the impact of mass media on health behaviors.<\/p>\n Aminata Traore was the first young intern at The Koop Institute. Now a medical student at University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, she says that the internship is a great opportunity to glimpse a different side of healthcare and medicine. \u201cI learned a lot more about how corporations can have an effect on people\u2019s lives on a daily basis. I also saw how you can take research from a very confined space and apply it to a broader scale; for example, how The Koop Institute can help establish policy that shapes how much exposure to smoking kids get on a regular basis through television,\u201d she said in a phone interview. On a more personal note, \u201cI\u2019d say that being a Koop Scholar taught me how to be more critical\u2014to look at the science in research articles and be able to tell good science from bad. This is something every physician should be able to do,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n