Canton student earns top honors in statewide anti-tobacco poster contest

Contest heightens awareness of the dangers of tobacco and smoking

Waltham, Mass. – Jessica Vo, a fifth-grade student at the Dean S. Luce Elementary School in Canton, has earned top honors in the 2015 Massachusetts Medical Society and MMS Alliance Anti-Tobacco Poster Contest, an annual educational event to alert schoolchildren to the dangers of tobacco and smoking.

Vo was one of just 12 winners selected from more than 3,400 entries to the competition. The contest is open to youngsters in grades 1-6 throughout Massachusetts. Her entry, entitled Don’t smoke, because it causes death and smelly breath, depicted the ill effects of smoking on health and personal hygiene.

The competition asks students to create an original poster that ties in with certain themes for their grade. The themes by grades are: Grades 1 and 2: Show how tobacco is bad for your body; Grades 3 and 4: Show how using tobacco affects other people; Grades 5 and 6: Why I won’t start. Four entries are selected in each category, and the winning entries are chosen on the basis of originality, artistic merit, and relevance to the theme for the grades.

Winners were honored at a special June 3 luncheon event at the Massachusetts State House in Boston, where they received a certificate from the Medical Society and a gift card for books as prizes. Winning entries will also be included in a 2016 calendar produced by the Medical Society that will be distributed to schools, pediatricians, and family physicians across the Commonwealth.

Presenting the awards were Dennis Dimitri, M.D., President of the Massachusetts Medical Society; Steven Qi, a Tufts University Medical School student and member of the Medical Society’s Committee on Student Health and Sports Medicine; and Tami Gouveia, executive director of Tobacco Free Mass. This year marked the 20th year that the Massachusetts Medical Society has conducted the contest. The winning entries may be viewed at www.massmed.org/tobacco

The Massachusetts Medical Society, with more than 25,000 physicians and student members, is dedicated to educating and advocating for the patients and physicians of Massachusetts. The Society, under the auspices of NEJM Group, publishes the New England Journal of Medicine, a leading global medical journal and web site, and Journal Watch alerts and newsletters covering 13 specialties. The Society is also a leader in continuing medical education providing accredited and certified activities across the globe for physicians and other health care professionals. Founded in 1781, MMS is the oldest continuously operating medical society in the country. For more information please visit www.massmed.org, www.nejm.org, or www.jwatch.org.

5g@