NEWS

Noted tobacco scholar to address clean indoor air policies as cancer prevention strategy

CHAPEL HILL -- The use of clean indoor air policies as a cancer prevention and control strategy will be the focus of a talk by Dr. Stanton Glantz at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health on Tuesday (March 4).

A nationally recognized tobacco control advocate, Glantz is professor of medicine and a member of the Institute for Health Policy Studies and the Cardiovascular Research Institute at the University of California at San Francisco. His 10 a.m. presentation, which is free to the public, will take place in the School of Public Health’s Ibrahim Seminar Room, 1301 McGavran-Greenberg Hall.

Glantz has long been a critic of the tobacco industry and is a leader in the tobacco control and public health community. In 1983, he helped defend the San Francisco Workplace Smoking Ordinance against a tobacco industry attempt to repeal it by referendum. The San Francisco victory represented the tobacco industry’s first electoral defeat and is now viewed as a major turning point in the battle for nonsmokers’ rights. He is also one of the founders of Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights.

His book, "The Cigarette Papers," was based on secret documents provided by an anonymous corporate source and had a profound impact on public health debate regarding tobacco and the appropriate regulation of its use.

An associate editor of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology and a member of the California State Scientific Review Panel on Toxic Air Contaminants, Glantz has served as a consultant to the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the National Science Foundation and numerous scientific publications.

His visit to UNC is sponsored by several campus units: the Pre-Doctoral Tobacco Use Prevention and Control Training Program, the department of health behavior and health education, the School of Public Health and Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center’s cancer prevention and control training program.

While at UNC, Glantz will meet with students and faculty, including the Cancer Prevention Fellows of the Lineberger center and the Tobacco Prevention Scholars at the School of Public Health.

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School of Public Health contact: Lisa Katz, (919) 966-7467 or lisa_katz@unc.edu
News Services contact: Deb Saine, (919) 962-8415