Study will track teens who have kicked the habit through CHER program

A Spokane stop-smoking class for teenagers has been selected for a national study that will evaluate about 60 programs.

Teenagers in the class will be asked to complete a survey when the program starts, when it ends and at six months and one year after the class. Participants will be asked to blow into a carbon monoxide monitor to confirm whether they’ve quit or not.

The seven-week class is offered by Community Health Education and Resources. It is free and meets from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at St. Luke’s Rehabilitation Institute in the lower level board room.

Emily Fleury, a 27-year-old health educator, has led the class for three years. She has learned to admire the teenagers who attend.

“They just amaze me with how they want to learn,” she said. “They don’t want to do this anymore, but they need help.”

Smoking can be an escape from the frustrations of being a teenager, Fleury said. She teaches the kids ways to reduce stress, such as setting realistic priorities, deep breathing and “standing up for yourself in a positive way.”

Fleury loses track of the kids after the class ends so she doesn’t know whether they ultimately succeed in kicking tobacco. The national study will close that gap.

The study, Helping Young Smokers Quit, is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the National Cancer Institute and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Susan J. Curry, professor of health policy and administration at the University of Illinois at Chicago is the principal investigator.

Teenagers, parents or school personnel can call the CHER office at 232-8138 for more information.

Delirium in the hospital

Sacred Heart Medical Center’s Dr. Lior Givon works with patients who develop delirium in the hospital due to reactions to medications, anesthesia or their medical condition.

Researchers have found that as many as one in 10 patients develop delirium in the hospital, which can lengthen stays and be frightening to patients and their families.

“We can shorten the length of stay and help patients with this misery of feeling like they’re going out of their minds and not knowing why,” she said.

Givon is a psychiatrist whose specialty is called consultation liaison. She’s worked at Sacred Heart since July 2003. Medical staff call her when patients suffer hallucinations, confusion, memory problems and other psychiatric symptoms.

She can figure out the cause and, sometimes, prescribe antipsychotic medication.

“Help is available,” she said. “What people have to know is the following: mental status change is not a normal condition.”

Filmmaker to speak

Morgan Spurlock, the filmmaker who made the documentary “Super Size Me” about obesity and fast food, will speak Nov. 17 at Eastern Washington University. The speech is scheduled for 7 p.m. in Showalter Auditorium on EWU’s campus in Cheney.

Free conference

Cancer Care Northwest will hold a daylong conference on complementary medicine Saturday. Presentations on reiki, acupuncture, massage, naturopathy and Chinese herbal therapy are on the agenda. Breakfast and lunch are included. The conference is free for cancer patients and others who are interested. It will be held from 8:15 a.m. to 5:15 p.m. at Cancer Care Northwest, 601 S. Sherman Ave., Spokane. Call 747-4316 by Wednesday to register.

Flu poll

In a telephone survey of 1,012 U.S. adults, ages 18 and older, 40 percent say they plan to get a flu shot this year, only slightly lower than the 47 percent who reported they got a shot last year.

The poll was conducted Oct. 11 through 14, the week after the announcement that Chiron Corporation would not be supplying an expected 46 million to 48 million doses of vaccine to the United States.

Among those 65 and older, 72 percent said they plan to get a flu shot this year, according to the Gallup Poll Tuesday Briefing. Seventy-five percent of older Americans said they got a flu shot last year.

The numbers add some perspective to news reports of long lines of elderly people waiting for their shots.

“I call it the Beanie Baby effect,” said Gregory Poland, Mayo Clinic’s director of vaccine research, in the Wall Street Journal last week. “It’s a scarcity mentality. People perceive that it’s not available, and now they want it.”