For Release: July 21, 2009
Contact: dms.communications@dartmouth.edu, 603-650-1492
New Online Health Promotion Series Offers Smoking Prevention Strategies for Child Health Professionals
Dr. Henry Bernstein
Hanover, N.H.—An online teaching and learning hub for health promotion based at Dartmouth Medical School and Children's Hospital at Dartmouth (CHaD) has launched courses on tobacco counseling strategies for young girls.
Pediatrics in Practice has announced a new curriculum designed for nurses, pediatricians and other child health professionals to convey smoking prevention messages to early adolescent females (8 to 11 years old) and their families. The course, funded by Pfizer Inc. through an unrestricted medical education grant, is comprised of three modules.
Drawing upon the earlier successes of Pediatrics in Practice, the website provides a complete series of online health promotion courses, created to advance the effective practice and treatment of children and their families, according to Dr. Henry (Hank) Bernstein, professor of pediatrics at Dartmouth Medical School Bernstein who led the team that developed the new program.
"Despite a national decline in smoking rates, young girls are exposed to intense social and media pressures to smoke. Our online courses support the health professional in applying concrete strategies to open and maintain the conversation with young girls and their families around smoking prevention and cessation," said Bernstein.
That tobacco counseling program offers high quality content through interactive, user-friendly features. It includes three patient-provider concepts: promoting health among adolescent girls, communicating prevention and cessation messages, and partnership building for effective counseling.
Our online courses ... open and maintain the conversation with young girls and their families around smoking prevention and cessation.
—Dr. Henry Bernstein
"We know that young girls (and boys) perceive their doctors as credible and want to talk about these issues with them. As health care providers, we have to capitalize on these critical opportunities so that we can reduce smoking related diseases and illness among girls and women in the future," Bernstein pointed out.
Health professionals can also encourage young girls to visit the award-winning No Smoking Room, a companion web-based health intervention site that empowers young girls to say "no" to smoking. The site was honored by the Health and Science Communications Association at the 2009 Media Festival.
Continuing education and continuing medical education credits for Pediatrics in Practice courses are available through Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. The courses were designed by BioMedical Media.
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For more information, or for a laminated copy of a No Smoking Room door hanger, please contact Henry Bernstein at henry.bernstein@hitchcock.org.
-DMS-
