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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 16, 2004
CONTACT:
C. Kenneth Meyer, (515) 271-4128, kenneth.meyer@rake.edu
Carlyn Crowe, (515) 241-3390, CROWECM@ihs.org
Lisa Lacher, (515) 271-3119, lisa.lacher@drake.edu
DRAKE SENDS 55 TO EUROPE TO DISCUSS SMOKING PREVENTION AND OTHER PUBLIC POLICIES THAT IMPACT CHILDREN
Fifty-five students, professors and other members of the Drake University community will visit several European countries this month to study how public policy affects the welfare of children.
The 18-day trip, led by Drake professor C. Kenneth Meyer, is part of a graduate course on Comparative Management and Policy Analysis in A Global Context. The group leaves Thursday, March 18, for a series of meetings with several high-ranking European business and governmental officials.
"This course enables us to compare programs at the state and local level that deal with major problems facing children with premier programs in seven countries in Europe," said Meyer, the Thomas F. Sheehan distinguished professor of public administration at Drake. "The problems we face here are also faced in other parts of the world, and they deal with them in different ways. This trip helps develop experience, civic enhancement and intercultural awareness, which increases our ability to understand, interact and lead in the world community."
The group members will:
The group will focus heavily on tobacco use and prevention at the National Institute of Public Health in Prague, Czech-Republic, and the Department of Health Policy and Organization at Semmelweis University in Budapest, Hungary.
Drake student Carlyn Crowe said she is eager to learn more about how those countries are using public policy to counter tobacco marketing and advertising campaigns that impact children.
"We'll be looking at advertising and cultural acceptance, and how the targeting of women is having a bigger effect on kids because women are typically the primary caregiver, so children will be around it and be around second-hand smoke," she said.
"The other problem we're seeing is American movies are very prevalent in Europe, and because movies portray smoking at a higher rate than what it actually is, they think everybody in the U.S. smokes. What we're finding is kids pick up on that in movies. It's a rebellion thing and the proliferation is coming from movies on the big screen and its enticing children to try smoking."
These kinds of issues are making tobacco use much worse in many European countries than in the United States, Crowe said. In the U.S., about 25 percent of males smoke compared to 70 percent of males in Hungary and Turkey.
But there is hope that public policies are changing attitudes toward smoking, she said.
"Much like what is beginning to happen in America, Ireland has outlawed smoking in public places, so you can't go to the local pub and smoke," she said. "Norway is coming on board with that, too."
This trip, the sixth of its kind at Drake, will offer some additional perspective beyond the planned itinerary. The group will arrive in Europe nearly one year after the war in Iraq began. Crowe, who has participated in the last two trips, said she got a lot of insight about the war from Europeans last year.
"Most of them were very open and accepting of us but wanted to talk about it too, but not in a controversial way," she said. "Europeans recognize that problems are part of society. For us it's almost like we shouldn't have to think about these things because it's not part of our culture."
Fortunately, the war and the threat of terrorism at home and abroad haven't deterred students from signing up to go on the trip this year.
"Two years ago, we had less than 25 people go on the trip right after 9/11," Crowe said. "This year we have over 50."
Upon their return, the students and professors will examine what they learn from their European counterparts and will discuss how policy changes can motivate people to change negative behaviors.
"So it's that exposure to the way other cultures and countries approach challenging issues in their society that lets us see how we can learn from them and how they can learn from us," Crowe said. "We're going to talk about how to affect public policy on issues that are important to us. Once we learn more about these issues, we'll be asking, 'How do you sit down and try to make changes that will affect the health and well-being of children?' "