Heart Foundation: Day 2

Today I spoke with a Project Officer from the Australian Council on Smoking & Health (ACOSH) named Dora Oliva. ACOSH works closely with the Heart Foundation, as Maurice Swanson, the CEO of the Heart Foundation, is also the President of ACOSH. Dora spent about an hour and a half with me explaining what ACOSH does, as well as showing me a good bit of resources that they have developed and advertised. Their goal is to "Significantly reduce the impact of the health consequences of smoking." They just developed 7 actions for the government to follow to ensure that tobacco control remains a priority for the WA state government in order to achieve a Tobacco free Western Australia by 2025. As my Magellan is based on tobacco control, a main focus of mine is second-hand smoke and smoke-free environments and campuses, Dora gave me multiple resources on how University smoke-free policies are developed. They make it very easy for the average person to understand, which is very nice because not everyone understands medical talk. Dora was also nice enough to arrange a meeting with the Cancer Council of Western Australia for me as well! So I am very excited for the rest of my week here.

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