Grant Will Address LGBT Students' Tobacco Use

The Center for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Education, Outreach, and Services has been awarded a grant from the Tobacco Control Coalition through the Tompkins County Health Department. Totaling $3,150, the grant will support a project on tobacco use prevention and cessation for Ithaca College students who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgendered.

"Research shows that rates of cigarette smoking among LGBT people are much higher than among the general population," says Lisa Maurer, coordinator of the LGBT center. "Yet this subject is just beginning to receive attention."

The grant will support special programming throughout the spring 2003 semester aimed at increasing knowledge of the health risks tobacco use poses for LGBT people, increasing knowledge of the ways tobacco companies target the LGBT community, creating action plans to resist those tactics, and promoting cessation and preventing initiation of tobacco use among LGBT students.

As part of this program, information packets will be distributed to assist LGBT smokers quit or cut back their tobacco use. Known as Quik Kits, the packets will be available at the LGBT center, Office of Multicultural Affairs offices in Egbert Hall and the Towers Concourse, Hammond Health Center, and several other locations both on campus and in the greater Ithaca community.

In addition, Maurer will give a presentation, "Selling Out: How LGBT People Have Become Targets of Big Tobacco," on Thursday, March 20. The event, which begins at 7:30 p.m. in Williams 221, will also feature the Ithaca premier of the new independent documentary film How They Get Us to Screw Ourselves. Made by the Coalition of Lavender Americans on Smoking and Health, the film has been showcased at the San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival and other independent film festivals across the nation.

"The film event purposefully takes place during the first annual National LGBT Health Awareness Week," Maurer says. "The goals of this effort are to make the public aware of the unique health concerns and health disparities among the LGBT communities and to educate medical and health care professionals in the area of cultural competence with regard to LGBT health."

Maurer adds that all people, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, or level of tobacco involvement, are welcome to take part in the activities associated with the grant initiatives.

For more information contact Maurer at 274-7394 or lmaurer@ithaca.edu. Additional resources on LGBT people and smoking can be found at the LGBT Resource Center.