VALUE ADDED: USG Serves Georgia
October 2009
Helping Women in the South's Public Housing to Quit Smoking
Researchers from the Medical College of Georgia (MCG) and a South Carolina medical school are helping women who live in public housing in Georgia and South Carolina stop smoking through the revival and expansion of a proven smoker-led intervention program.
With $3.1 million in funding from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, Dr. Martha Tingen, a nurse researcher at MCG's Georgia Prevention Institute, and Dr. Jeanette Andrews, associate dean for research and evaluation and director of the Center for Community Health Partnerships at the Medical University of South Carolina, will expand the Sister to Sister program to women in public housing units in Augusta and Charleston, S.C.
Sister to Sister utilizes help from former smokers from the community, a nicotine patch and group support to help the women kick the habit.
Andrews, the grant's principal investigator, developed and tested the program while she was a faculty member in the MCG School of Nursing.
"The program works because it is a multilevel approach," Andrews says. "We start at the neighborhood level by getting buy-in from the tenants. Then, at the peer-group level, we have the women who want to quit work in groups with a cessation specialist and provide them with the patch. Finally, at the individual interaction level, women work one-on-one with a community health worker."
The program helped nearly 50 percent of women smokers in an Augusta public housing unit quit smoking by the end of a six-week session in 2006. Less than 8 percent of women in
Nurse Researcher Dr. Martha Tingen (left) and Dr. Jeanette Andrews, associate dean for research and evaluation, and director of the Center for Community Health Partnerships at the Medical University of South Carolina, have teamed up to combat the prevalence of smoking among women who live in public housing in Georgia and South Carolina by offering a community-based intervention program to help them quit.
a comparison group without peer and individual support kicked the habit, says Andrews. Six months after they quit, 27.5 percent of the women in the treatment neighborhood hadn't resumed smoking. In the comparison group, only 5.7 percent were still smoke-free.
Over the next four years, the researchers will expand the study to include 406 women in 16 public housing units nine in Augusta and seven in Charleston. Half of the women will be part of a treatment group, receiving the nicotine patch and peer and individual support, and the other half will be part of a control group, receiving
See "Quit Smoking Aid," p. 2...
VALUE ADDED USG Serves Georgia
Quit Smoking Aid Continued from p. 1
information on how to quit smoking. Once the study is complete, however, the control group will also receive the patch and have access to peer and individual support.
After six months of the intervention program, participants will be asked to self-report whether they quit smoking. Researchers will also measure levels of salivary cotinine, a metabolized version of nicotine and indicator of smoking, and carbon monoxide in the blood.
"It's important to have the biological validation," says Tingen.
"This is a community-based study," Andrews says. "We believe that it works because it was developed with input from the women who actually went through the program."
Women in public housing are an important target group because they report higher rates of smoking than women in the general population and they were interested in quitting smoking, Andrews says.
"African-American women in public housing communities report a smoking prevalence of 40 percent, with at least two-thirds of households having at least one smoker in the residence," she says, pointing out that an estimated 40-60 percent of African-Americans in public housing smoke, compared to 20-22 percent in the general population.
"Our experience has shown that empowering them is the key. Women who complete the program often realize they can quit smoking and they feel empowered to make other positive changes in their lives." Q
Operation Reboot: Georgia Tech Turning Unemployed IT Workers into Computing Teachers
With the help of a recent $2.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation, the Georgia Tech College of Computing will mitigate the stress of joblessness for unemployed information technology (IT) professionals over the next three years. Operation Reboot, as the project is aptly titled, has begun transforming an initial set of 30 IT workers in Georgia into high school computing teachers.
Operation Reboot will combine Georgia Tech's high school computing-teacher training program and the successful Georgia Teacher Alternative Preparation Program (GaTAPP) to pair an IT worker with an existing computing teacher.
The pair will co-teach at least two computing classes for one year, allowing the IT professional to learn the ins and outs of a classroom and the teacher to get an education in IT. Simultaneously, the IT worker will receive an initial teaching certificate and a computer science endorsement, a special area of expertise for teachers to add on to their certification.
"A teacher's motivation, self efficacy, job satisfaction and commitment to teaching are closely linked with their professional identity," said Barbara Ericson,
Director of Computing Outreach at the College of Computing and principal investigator for Operation Reboot. "Through the teacher workshops at Georgia Tech, courses needed for certification, co-teaching and mentoring, we will transform these IT workers' identities into that of a computing teacher."
Operation Reboot ultimately aims to improve the computing education of 4,600 students over the next three years by increasing the number of well trained computing teachers and the number of computing classes being offered. By creating highly engaging curricular materials, improving the content and educational knowledge of computing teachers, Georgia Tech staff expect the number of students receiving a computing education to increase by at least 30 percent. This is especially important for the economy and students interested in computing careers, as jobs in the field are expected to be some of the fastest growing through 2016.
Georgia Tech will publish results of the project and share materials with other states to serve as a model on how to successfully transform unemployed IT workers into high school computing teachers. Q