The 13th World Conference on Tobacco OR Health

Objective: This presentation is part of a session that chronicles the history of tobacco use among communities of color in the U.S. from the sacred use by Native Americans, to the growing and labor of African Americans and the increased targeting and use by immigrant groups nationally and worldwide. This presentation in particular will highlight ongoing challenges facing Hispanic/Latino communities including training, innovative capacity buiding and leadership development to acheive parity in tobacco control.

Methods: A capacity building and leadership development framework utilized by the California based Hispanic/Latino Tobacco Education Partnership to eliminate disparities in tobacco control will be presented along with recommendations for achieving parity. Emphasis will be placed on working locally at the grass-roots level in order to impact macro-level policies, social and cultural norm change in tobacco use. We highlight the development of leadership and tobacco control needs in a changing socio-political environment fueled in part by the current immigration debate among Hispanic/Latinos nation-wide.

Results: Sucessful programmatic examples of culturally relevant second-hand smoke and cessation efforts that seek to achieve parity will be presented. We will show the evaluation results of Hispanic/Latino Tobacco Education Partnership in utilizing this framework to develop community leadership capacity and to shape cultural and social norms to deter tobacco use. We will also present mechanisms for community organizing and mobilization to engage Hispanic/Latinos in tobacco control initiatives at the local level.