Great Training Day

Today, I had the great opportunity to realize the fulfillment of a great training day for folks in the Southeast Asian community on tobacco control. We brought in three Asian Pacific Islander trainers from California to work with Minnesota folks. It was the second part of a two part training series. The first training took place in September 2005. The community was very interactive in this training that we hope will move the Cambodia, Hmong, Lao and Vietnamese communities more agressively in reducing the harm that tobacco causes their populations.

For those that are not aware, some of these communities have smoking prevelance rates as high as 70% among the male population. Unfortunately, Centers for Disease Control data has lower rates because they aggregate data among all Asian American groups. However, in states like California where they have done more local community studies, they have discovered higher rates. In Minnesota, we are working with various ethnic communities to collect good local prevelance data.