Rod Lew, Founder and Executive Director of APPEAL (Asian Pacific Partners for Empowerment, Advocacy, and Leadership), will present on the demographic trends and current policies regarding tobacco use and e-cigarettes among Asian/Asian American communities. Representatives from NICOS Chinese Health Coalition—Rita Huang and Andrea Zhou—will discuss their recent findings about the local Chinese/Asian American populations’ use, perceptions, and attitudes towards tobacco/e-cigarettes.

CHSA will kick off the event with a presentation on the history of tobacco in Chinatown, while showcasing some artifacts from our collections.

Seating is limited—Please reserve your tickets soon. Tickets include entry to event and CHSA galleries.

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About Presenters

Asian Pacific Partners for Empowerment, Advocacy, and Leadership (APPEAL) is a national organization working towards social justice and a tobacco-free Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AA and NHPI) community. Founded in 1994, APPEAL was originally a program of Asian Health Services, a local community health center in Oakland, California. It has since established itself as an important national network providing key technical assistance and resources on health justice.

Rod Lew

Rod Lew, MPH, is the Founder and Executive Director of APPEAL. Prior to APPEAL, Rod was the Health Education Director at Asian Health Services and the Associate Director for the Association of Asian Pacific Community Health Organizations. Rod was a contributing author to the 1998 Surgeon General’s Report on Tobacco Use and has written and published widely on tobacco and health disparities. Rod provided testimony to the U.S. Congressional Committee on Commerce on the impact of national tobacco policy in 1999 and to the U.S. Surgeon General in 2004. He has also served on numerous national health advisory committees, including the State of California Tobacco Education and Research Oversight Committee (2000-2006), American Public Health Association (APHA) Equal Health Opportunity Committee (2005-6) and APHA Asian Pacific Islander Caucus, where he served as Chair (1998-2000). Rod was the 2002 recipient of the Christopher Jenkins Cancer Control Award. In 2009, he also received the Lester Breslow Lifetime Achievement Award from the UCLA School of Public Health, his alma mater.

NICOS Chinese Health Coalition is a public-private-community partnership of more than 30 health and human service organizations and concerned individuals. Their mission is to enhance the health and well-being of the San Francisco Chinese community. The coalition fulfills its mission through research, training, advocacy, coalition-building and program implementation.

Co-sponsored by:
 

Part of our Chinese American: Health Legacy Series, highlighting health issues that have particular impact on Asian American communities, and the influence that Chinese exclusion continues to have on Chinese American communities and the larger American society. To learn more about the origins of this history, please visit our exhibition, Chinese American: Exclusion/Inclusion.