A leader in tobacco control and prevention in California traces her inspiration to her grandmother
Lourdes Baezconde-Garbanati, PhD, MPH
Lourdes Baezconde-Garbanati, PhD, MPH, is one of the originators of the tobacco control and prevention movement, with a special focus in the Hispanic community. She views research as a major part of that movement. "Community-based research is helping us to develop an accurate road map for enhancing public health especially when it comes to our efforts to stem tobacco use."
Lourdes Baezconde-Garbanati, PhD, MPH, has a personal connection to healthy lungs. Her grandmother died from emphysema. Her grandmother had no health care to extend or improve her life and no education or research to help her and her loved ones understand the cause of her disease. With her grandmother as her inspiration, Baezconde-Garbanatis has become a leader in tobacco control and prevention. She and her colleagues coordinated the Hispanic Tobacco Education Network in California where their research on the interaction of culture and behavior and an understanding (a result of their research) of how to approach different audiences with the same message has led to growing successes in the fight against tobacco use in her community.
Baezconde-Garbanati's community-based research has demonstrated that the most effective tobacco cessation programs focus on educating people on the risks of smoking, not attacking the smoker. Her work with the community and her efforts to improve the lives of teenagers and ethnic populations caught the attention of the American Legacy Foundation. It awarded her the 2006 Community Activism Award-the first time this award has been given to a researcher.
With her work directly tied to public health practice and policy, Baezconde-Garbanati is motivated by the wide-ranging results her research and grass-roots movements have on the health of Americans and those abroad. "Community-based research is helping us to develop an accurate road map for enhancing public health, especially when it comes to our efforts to stem tobacco use," she explains. "Our research leads to new innovations. The world is changing and there are new populations, new behaviors and new ways to communicate. We need to be innovative to be successful. We need better, more creative interventions, and we need to accelerate the translation of research findings into action to save more lives here at home and across the globe. It is especially urgent that we are smart and cost-effective during these tough economic times. We must use evidence-based interventions to guide our decisions and provide preventive services to all who need to access them-this will lead to major savings for our health system in the future."