GSDM Externship Trio Gets the Word Out About Smoking
Three students recently went above and beyond to fulfill their externship community outreach requirement. The students—Sayed Al-Mousawi DMD 12, Amy Mann DMD 12, and Vera Chernomordik DMD 12—attended an outreach event in East Boston held in the Shaw’s parking lot. The event included volunteers from Boston University School of Medicine, The Family Van, and the Dana Farber Van, as well as the three GSDM students and their externship preceptor from the Boston Healthcare for the Homeless Program (BHCHP), Dr. Alan Filzer.
As part of the externship program, all students are asked to identify a common problem among patients at their externship site and create a community outreach project that addresses that problem. At BHCHP these three students all saw smoking as the number one problem.
Explained Al-Mousawi, “From our short experience at the externship site, at least 6 out of 7 patients a day are current smokers. This is similar to the national average for homeless people.”
To get the word out about the harmful effects of smoking, Chernomordik created an informational poster with pictures and details about what smoking does to the oral cavity, oral cancer, and periodontal disease. Al-Mousawi and Mann created a second poster with pictures and information about the effects of smoking on the entire body and how to quit. The trio also passed out informational pamphelts that were donated by CHP Oral Health Promotion Director Kathy Lituri as well as pamphlets on quitting smoking that they ordered especially for this event from the Massachusetts Health Promotion Clearing House.
Local men, women, and children of East Boston, mainly of Hispanic descent, benefitted from the outreach effort. In addition to the smoking information, the group screened for oral cancer and other oral health issues.
Photos are available on facebook and flickr.