History
The name for this program has been adopted with permission, from the World Health Organization’s 1999 World No Tobacco Day campaign.
LTPB began in 2000, in response to a call for proposals from Ontario’s Ministry of Health. It was created by Sharon Lawler, RN, MEd, Kelli-an Lawrance, PhD, Melodie Shick-Porter, RN, BA (CommNurs) and John Cairney, PhD, representing the Community Health Sciences Department at Brock University, the Niagara Regional Public Health Department, and Student Health Services at Brock University. They proposed a tobacco control initiative that involved students, researchers, health professionals, and administrators from 6 post-secondary institutions and 5 health units across southern and central Ontario.
Since 2000, two medical consultants – Dr. Peter Selby and Dr. Valerie Jaeger – have made invaluable contributions to LTPB through their work on the Clinical Tobacco Intervention training for campus health and medical professionals.
In 2004, Linda Jessup, PhD (Health Studies and Gerontology Department, University of Waterloo) joined LTPB’s team of co-Directors.
Dr. Darrell Grant, Medical Director, Student Health Services, Brock University joins LTPB as its new Medical Consultant. Dr. Grant offers these initial thoughts about LTPB programming:
“I’m impressed with the variety and effectiveness of resources that LTPB offers campus clinics. [These include: free NRT, “clinic packages” to hand to patients, opportunities for Continuing Medical Education related to smoking cessation, posters, notepads, and resources for patients.] I encourage my colleagues to hand out the orange “clinic packages” every chance they get- and definitely when they provide an NRT to a smoker.”
As of 2012, LTPB is established on all public post-secondary institutions in Ontario (at all 20 universities and all 24 applied arts colleges). More than 598,000 students and an estimated 155,000 smokers have access to unique programs and services offered by LTPB.