Meeting 1: Dr. Freeman

Today, August 8th, I had my meeting with one of New South Wales' leading tobacco control researchers. Her name is Dr. Becky Freeman, and I am extremely grateful that I had the chance to speak with her about her research, as it is very prevalent in this day and age. Her PhD focused on how Facebook and YouTube affect tobacco control, as it was stated when social media was just starting to take off. She is currently a senior lecturer at the University of Sydney at the School of Public Health, which is where I met her. The building she is located in was called the "Charles Perkins Centre for Eating and Dieting Disorders," which is fairly new, and the research labs located here were state of the art. There is a picture of the building under the "Photos" tab. I am also going to attach the Interview Q&A under the "Interviews" page, because the responses she had for my questions are far too long and important to be summed up in a blog post. What she really stressed to me during this interview, however, is that tobacco control is not only about getting people to get smoking but also about the types of advertising and public policies behind smoking that affects tobacco control in general. So after my interview I am really going to be looking for the types of advertisements that I see about quitting smoking, as well as their placements in the city suburb areas.