Why Teach for Health

The first question that needs answering is why should someone contribute to this effort- the question of how do we really know we are making a difference? But before we tackle this question, let us run through some basic facts about the tobacco problem.
Tobacco today kills nearly one million people in india, making it the number one cause of preventable deaths in the country. To put this number in perspective, Tobacco kills more people than Tuberculosis (0.37 million), AIDS (0.2 million) and Road Traffic Accidents (0.1 million) combined(1). Moreover, unlike many other diseases, the tobacco problem doesn’t seem to be improving in our country. Research has shown that more and more young people are getting hooked onto tobacco in developing countries such as India (2), even as many developed countries see a steady decline in the number of tobacco users each year due to the intensified efforts of their government and civil society. The keyword here is civil society, whose engagement is essential to change the social acceptability of tobacco and to discourage its use.
There are three primary approaches to the tobacco problem (3)- regulatory, providing cessation treatment to existing users, and to prevent new users by providing school based education programs. And this is where a program such as Teach For Health comes in.
References-
1) Park's Textbook of Preventive and Social Medicine
2)http://www.hriday-shan.org/hriday/publications1.html
3)http://www.tobaccofreekids.org/reports/surgeongeneral/ataglance.pdf