Mega Doctor News
Montgomery, TX. –Tobacco use remains the #1 cause of preventable death in the U.S.A.; causing more deaths than alcohol, AIDS, car crashes, illegal drugs, murders, suicides, and homicides combined. The SayWhat! program, housed out of Texas State University in San Marcos, offers annual conferences where youth involved in tobacco prevention across the state are afforded the opportunity to network and learn strategies, current facts and figures, tools, and techniques to help them and their peers steer clear from tobacco.
SayWhat! stands for Students, Adults and Youth Working Hard Against Tobacco! and was created by Texas youth to connect everyone working towards reducing tobacco use throughout the Lone Star State. Youth leaders saw a need to unify the various, and typically disconnected, tobacco prevention efforts statewide aimed at protecting Texans from the harmful effects of tobacco. Youth from all over the state from various coalitions and tobacco prevention groups will attend conference, which features workshops, motivational speakers, and training sessions to teach advocacy and leadership skills to teen leaders. Because of their continued dedication and community engagement with the Hidalgo County Tobacco Prevention & Control Coalition, ten teens from the RGV have been selected to attend.
The Hidalgo County TPCC is a coalition effort of Behavioral Health Solutions of South Texas, located in Pharr. The Coalition was established to empower Hidalgo County to affect individual and social change through cooperation, sharing and coordination of resources focused on preventing and reducing the illegal and harmful use of tobacco products.
The TPCC’s goals are to prevent tobacco use among young people, promote compliance and support adequate enforcement of federal, state and local tobacco laws, increase cessation among young people and adults, eliminate exposure to secondhand smoke, reduce tobacco use among populations with the highest burden of tobacco-related health disparities, develop and maintain statewide capacity for comprehensive tobacco prevention and control.
For information on opportunities to become a volunteer coalition member for the TPCC, contact volunteer specialist Yolanda Guzman at yguzman@bhsst.org or (956)787-0004 Ext. 19. Follow/Like the TPCC on Facebook (facebook.com/unidadtpcc) and Twitter/Instagram (@unidad_tpcc) for the most current news on Coalition events and activities, as well as local, state, national, and worldwide trends on tobacco enforcement and surveillance.
