Press Release

CASE participates in annual Meeting of the Minds

Columbia, Mo. (March 5, 2007) - A record number of CASE members participated in the seventh annual Meeting of the Minds conference in Kansas City, Mo., March 1-3, 2007.

This regional conference educates students and professionals about peer education and prevention strategies related to tobacco, alcohol, drugs and other wellness topics. The event was sponsored by CASE, Partners in Prevention, the BACCHUS Network, the Network, and Missouri Partners in Environmental Change.

"It was great to get so many of CASE staff and PASS students together. I thought student presentations on the work accomplished in Kirksville and Columbia were impressive," said Dr. Kevin Everett, assistant professor at the Department of Family and Community Medicine at University of Missouri-Columbia and CASE principal investigator. "I think we are attracting great students and staff (poised, professional, personable) as advocates for healthy smoke-free educational and work environments."

The following CASE members participated in the conference:

• Traci Harr, sophomore and president of the MU PASS, presented an interactive program that gave participants step-by-step instructions on forming their advocacy group and talked about the role of PASS in the adoption of the smoke-free ordinance in Columbia.
• Shelly Rodgers, associate professor at the MU School of Journalism and CASE co-investigator, led a session on using strategic communication. It gave participants a contemporary view of the role and importance of strategic communication concepts in enhancing their group's ability to influence public policy and change social and health behaviors.
• Dean Andersen, SAFE-Columbia co-chair, headed a session on how the tobacco companies get the GLBT communities to victimize themselves. This session looked at how the tobacco industry targeted the GLBT community through a strategic campaign, and the price the GLBT community is paying as a result. Andersen examined both the financial cost and the physical costs of smoking to the GLBT community, and how that community is beginning to fight back.
• Kim Dude, director of the MU Wellness Resource Center and CASE co-investigator, was one of the panelists in a discussion on current prevention and social trends and legal challenges in the field of health prevention. She also served as a facilitator in a roundtable on using social norms in prevention.
• Erin Black, CASE health promotion specialist for Kirksville, Carolyn Cox, associate professor in health science at Truman State University and a group of students from the university led an interactive session on creating a campaign plan to "elect" a smoke-free ordinance. They discussed their experience with drafting a smoke-free ordinance, organizing volunteers, collecting data, involving the media and gaining wide-spread community support.
• Traci Harr and Mike Puricelli from the MU PASS gave a talk about influencing campus policy. They showed participants their proposal for a clean-air policy on the MU campus and the presentation they will take to the campus Smoke Free Task Force. They also examined policies on other campuses, and the benefits of going smoke-free at MU.