Using stigma as a public health tool in the prevention of smoking
“In recent years, addictions policy has stressed the need to counteract stigmatization in order to promote public health. However, through tobacco ‘denormal-ization’ strategies, tobacco control advocates appear to have embraced the use of stigma as an explicit policy tool.”
So says a recent research article authored by the University of British Columbia’s Kirsten Bell and others. The paper argues that smokers have been stigmatized by current tobacco policies, with a number of potentially negative impacts. (more…)
Men’s centres in Nanaimo and Cowichan have experiences to share as 2010 gets underway. From funding crises to start-up challenges, organizers continue to agree on the importance of offering men’s counseling and support services from men’s organizations.
Let Beauty Be: a Season in the Highlands, Guatemala is a cycle of sequential poems distilled from events and impressions Kit Pepper gained while volunteering in the northwestern highlands of Guatemala from February to May, 2006. There she was aligned with Alianza, a project which responded to grassroots requests for education and health care from the local Mam-speaking women and men of Comitancillo and surrounding, rural aldeas.
The trailer has been viewed over 22,000 times on YouTube…and the DVD is about to be released. For eleven months, a core group of students at Nanaimo’s Wellington Secondary School have been at work on the feature film, “How to Survive the 10th Grade,” with a cast of forty students, ten crew members, and others. The film touches on a range of high school issues, including drug use, violence, rivalry and peer and sexual pressure. 
We share some scenes from two of Charles Dickens’ series of Christmas books, The Chimes and A Christmas Carol along with passages from Thomas Carlyle’s Past and Present in a brief investigation of the portrayal of social justice in 1840s Britain. We ask the question, what does the past have to say to our current present?
Christmas is traditionally a season of joy, family reunions, friendship and generosity. So why do so many people get so tied up in knots about it all? For some, Christmastime can be the most difficult, even the loneliest time of the year. What’s the best approach to use during the holiday season?