UNMC students honored for tobacco-free education program

Each year, students in UNMC and Creighton University’s Family Medicine Interest Groups urge kids to be tobacco-free.

Now, the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) has recognized their statewide educational efforts and awarded them the 2008 Tar Wars Star Award.

The award honors individuals and organizations that have significantly contributed to the tobacco-free education program aimed at fourth- and fifth-grade students. More than 100 UNMC medicine, pharmacy and nursing students participate in the program each year.

“The Tar Wars Star Award means the outreach our students have done for the benefit of grade school kids and their health has been effective and has been recognized as being effective,” said Paul Paulman, M.D., assistant dean for clinical skills and quality and professor and predoctoral director, UNMC Department of Family Medicine. “It’s a nice pat on the back.”

“The Tar Wars Star Award means the outreach our students have done for the benefit of grade school kids and their health has been effective and has been recognized as being effective.” Paul Paulman, M.D.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of Tar Wars, a program designed to teach kids about the short-term, image-based consequences of tobacco use, the cost associated with using tobacco products and the advertising techniques used by the tobacco industry to market their products to youth.

UNMC students have shared their tobacco-free education program with thousands of students across the state from Chadron to Omaha and Falls City to Pender since the program’s inception in 1988.

“There has been a Tar Wars presentation in virtually every Nebraska community with a hospital and family physician,” Dr. Paulman said, noting how students often do presentations while on family medicine rotations.

The Nebraska Department of Health estimates that children first experiment with tobacco at age 12.

The Tar Wars program, owned and operated by the AAFP, culminates with an annual poster contest, which encourages children to create posters that emphasize the positive aspects of not using tobacco, said Barbara Goodman, who administers the Tar Wars program at UNMC.