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Oral tobacco use and increase in prevalence of shisha – a practical workshop
Leena Sankla, Head of Health Inequality, Cardio Wellness Reading, UK
Abstract
This presentation will highlight the scale of the problem of tobacco chewing amongst certain ethnic groups and will give an insight to how to access these groups, provide treatment using traditional NRT, break down cultural barriers and how, when and where to set up clinics to get maximum throughput. The audience will also have the opportunity to examine several tobacco chewing products that are typically used and consumed in the UK.
In addition, the paper will present findings from an ongoing prevalence survey of tobacco chewing among the ethnic population in Reading, Slough, Leicester and Brent. This survey looked at users awareness of product content, products used, symptoms of addiction, attempts to stop, cultural acceptance, age commenced, general use by the family, their views on the health impacts and ethnicity and gender breakdown.
The presentation will also outline the rising prevalence of shisha use amongst the youth, with views and opinions from users and non users of these products.
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About the presenter
Leena Sankla, FRSPH, is the Head of Health Inequality at Cardio Wellness, which specifically focuses on health inequalities within the Black, Minority & Ethnic (BME) community. In addition, she leads a number of smoking cessation projects for an organisation which is commissioned by PCTs as an external provider of such services. Her particular expertise is in reaching hard to reach groups, specifically BME groups, socially deprived groups and routine and manual workers. She has a long-standing knowledge of smoking and tobacco control, including shisha use and tobacco chewing and delivers these courses to healthcare professionals and trading standards officers.
She has worked closely with ITV and BBC on a number of health watch programmes and has lectured for the WHO at St Georges Hospital, International Centre for Drug Policy and works closely with the Advocacy Forum for Tobacco Control (AFTC), at the Tata Memorial Hospital, Mumbai.
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