For immediate release: August 18, 2003
For more information, contact Susan Griffith at 216-368-1004 or susan.griffith@case.edu

CLEVELAND—Stopping or preventing people from smoking or using tobacco products is one cause that the dental, medical and nursing professions share in their missions to keep people healthy.

photo by Susan Griffith Case dentistry, medicine and nursing students team up to help stamp out smoking.

Students from Case Western Reserve University's Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing, School of Dentistry and School of Medicine-along with Jazzmyn Finney and Saralyn Weppelman, two Cleveland Municipal School students from Future Connections-collaborated over six weeks this summer, designing the interdisciplinary 2003 SMILE (Summer Multi-disciplinary Innovation Learning Experience) Smoking Cessation and Prevention Program.

This is one of the first collaborative efforts of this kindamong students from the three schools, according to James Lalumandier, chair of community dentistry and director of the Healthy Smiles Sealant Program, and Susan Wentz, assistant professor of family medicine, and director of CWRU's Office of Urban Health, Urban Area Health Education Center and NetWellnessprograms. The excitement generated by a flyer Wentz sent around the medical school for student participation also caught the attention of nursing. The nursing school joined the collaboration, under the guidance of Bette Idemoto, a nursing graduate student, to complete the involvement of all health services.

For more than a year, Lalumandier and Wentz had searched for a way to bring students from the professional schools together. In spring, they hit upon the idea that smoking has major health consequences for patients seen by students from each of the professions.

For dentistry, anti-smoking education and prevention have become a concern. A recent survey of dental students and dental practitioners, conducted by Kristin Zakariasen from the dental school, found that dental practitioners asked their patients about their smoking habits but few felt comfortable providing information.
SMILE takes a two-prong approach in its education mission, as Beth Seltzer (SOM, 2003) outlined recently to faculty who helped the students test the program.

Along with Seltzer and the Cleveland students, Maryrose Bauschka (medicine); Ben Hale, Kimball Morejon and Tyler Reading (dentistry), and Henny Lukas (nursing) developed a health education curriculum for sixth and ninth grade students and an associated interdisciplinary one preparing students in the health professions to put it into practice.

In designing SMILE's curriculum for school children, students took information from a variety of smoking-prevention curriculums, from CWRU research and from what they had learned in their own classes, readings and experiences. The program was able to draw from university faculty members such as Scott Frank, MD MS, who directs CWRU's Master of Public Health program and has considerable expertise in smoking prevention and cessation programs. Similarly community partners provided vital support for the program as well including Mr. Gregory J. Ashe, President of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Cleveland.

The program for school children (which they advise before seeing) contains some graphic images such as slides of people who have smoked and suffered from cancers caused by smoking as well as medical visuals of a smoker's cancerous lungs that are bone hard compared to the spongy lungs of a non-smoker.

Finney and Weppelman, Cleveland students, provided the University students with a reality check about what works with their peers. The students, who have interests in medical careers, also designed an anti-smoking poster that the group plans to leave with classroom teachers after school visits and a board game that reinforces health messages about smoking.

"Our health professional students recognized and respected these two students as team experts in the culture of young people and adolescents," says Wentz.

The health professional curriculum exposes students to the medical and clinical aspects of smoking. CWRU health professional students learn clinical practice guidelines. Through additional sessions, the curriculum explores the health effects of smoking, how to teach kids about not smoking and what concerns are specific to each health profession. The core elements of the curriculum would be followed up by faculty speakers with expertise from within the schools and also discussions about how to expand the information learned about smoking prevention to other lifestyle issues.

"Being able to talk to patients is an important clinical skill," says Wentz. "One of the real exciting things about SMILE is having experience with people and having the opportunity to learn how to develop those communication skills."

Lalumandier says SMILE has the potential to be piggybacked onto the dental school's Healthy Smiles Sealant Program, which serves up to 15,000 first and sixth graders from the Cleveland Municipal School District.
Students would gain experience, relaying the health information to students, and become comfortable talking about this issue, says Lalumandier.

As Seltzer found out in piloting SMILE at the Boys and Girls Clubs of Cleveland, kids ask some far out questions.

"Those are the same kinds of questions that people-moms, dads and adults-have when sitting in the dental chair or in examination rooms. This program will empower students with the ability to answer those questions in a way that they can take complex scientific information and relay it in an understandable way to people without that science background," adds Wentz.

Since Seltzer has graduated from medical school, she notes the benefits her younger peers will have in working in the community. "Doctors may offer advice to patients visiting the doctor's or dentist's office to stop smoking, but the doctor may not know how that fits into the everyday life of the patient. Visiting the schools and learning about the community will give health professional students an idea of the day-to-day challenges patients face," states Seltzer.

This summer's program was made possible by funding from St. Luke's Foundation of Cleveland for participation by the medical and nursing students and the dental school, which annually supports research projects for as many as 20 incoming second-year students.

–Case–

 

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