Why are we interested in tobacco use prevention?
- Tobacco use remains the leading cause of preventable death and disease in Texas and the U.S. Smoking related illnesses cause more deaths each year than alcohol, car accidents, illegal drugs, suicides, homicides, driving while intoxicated, and fire - combined. (1)
- Cigarette smoking affects every organ of the body and is the number one cause of cancer deaths among Texans. (2)
- Secondhand smoke increases the risk of lung cancer and heart disease in non-smoking adults. In young children it increases the risk of developing asthma, middle ear
infections, bronchitis, pneumonia and cancer. (3) - Tobacco use costs businesses and tax payer's money - 15% of
all Medicaid medical costs are spent on smoking-related illnesses. (4)
Why are we interested in research and evaluation?
- Data-based research and evaluation are key to producing evidence
based programs that prevent and eliminate tobacco use.
Welcome to the UT Program Evaluation Team website. I'm Alexandra Loukas, the Principal Investigator of the team. My research on tobacco prevention and control encompasses one research study, the Vocational Student Tobacco Use Project (Vocational), and three evaluation studies; The Tobacco Prevention and Control Coalition (TPCC) Evaluation Project, the Tobacco Abatement Coalition Evaluation (TAC Eval) and the Healthcare Systems Change Project (Systems). Feel free to browse the pages using the links above, and to contact me if you have any questions.
Making the Connections between Public Health &
Primary Healthcare Settings Conference. Register Now!
November 8th-9th, 2011
Austin, TX
Please join us for a conference discussing the implications of electronic health records and meaningful use guidelines on public health practice. This conference will be relavant to public health practioners, health care system decision makers, EHR vendors, community health advocates and many others.
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