The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA

Abstract #40188

Peter Doran, PhD, CHES, Professor Emeritus, University of Maine at Farmington, RR # 1 Box 967, Belgrade, ME 04917, (207)465-3297, pcdoran@prexar.com

In 1996, Maine was reported by the CDC to have the highest rate of young adult smokers in the nation. The good news; this served as a catalyst for doubling our tobacco excise tax, providing funding for tobacco control and for the nation’s highest per capita legislative appropriation of settlement funds to tobacco control. The bad news; this status surprised the public health community. While the American Lung Association of Maine provided leadership to both the excise tax and settlement initiatives, we also changed our organization to prevent future surprises. We defined an initial set of lung health indicators and a systematic way to collect and analyze lung health data for program planning and evaluation. These Lung Health Indicators were behavioral e.g. smoking rates, environmental e.g. ozone exposure, and traditional morbidity and mortality data for infectious and chronic lung diseases. Wherever possible, the Maine data is compared with the US and the best state and benchmarks like Healthy People 2010 goals. The Indicators reside on our website. (www.mainelung.org) The smoking and pregnancy data has already been used as a basis for best practices conferences, as justification for legislative appropriation of tobacco settlement funds and improvement of state Medicaid smoking cessation policy. The Lung Health Indicator program has enabled us to define and monitor lung health status and concentrate resources on serious lung health threats. The Lung Health Indicator concept has recently been incorporated in the strategic planning process of the nationwide American Lung Association.

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