Visit from Delegate Morefield

Julia Wood with Mount Rogers Community Services was a terrific hostess this week to Delegate Will Morefield at Bland High School. Julia and I discussed with the Delegate the Life Skills Training program that she implements in grades 3-8 in Bland and Rocky Gap thanks to her VFHY tobacco use prevention grant. GO BEARS!

VFHY Programs SHINE!

Hats off to Bethany Webb of New River Valley Community Services and JD Carlin of Blue Ridge Behavioral Healthcare for their recent feature on NEWS 7!

Here are some photos of them hard at work (while cameras were rolling!) with kids in Roanoke City and Montgomery County. Both of these folks made all of us look great as the local television station highlighted what Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) funds are doing in our portion of the state.

If you didn't see last night's story, click here for the segment:
http://www.wdbj7.com/health/wdbj7-tobacco-money-to-keep-kids-healthy-has-it-gone-up-in-smoke-20111027,0,3538248.story

CVS Sells Poison Project

Drug stores are supposed to help us feel better when we are sick, right?

So have you ever thought about why cigarettes are available at the check out of these retailers? The very same lethal product that ends the life of over 400,000 Americans each year. The same product that causes cancer, heart disease, and emphysema that result in $75 billion in health care costs to treat. The same product that hooks hundreds of thousands of new, young smokers year in and year out.

One project is aimed at changing this contradiction in terms for CVS.

Check out the CVS sells poison project here: ww.ToxicTobaccoLaw.org/13news.shtml#CVS

Their objective is to get CVS pharmacy (over 7,000 stores, 500 medical clinics) to stop advertising, promoting, distributing and selling lethal, addictive cigarettes. CVS pharmacy claims to be the world's largest pharmacy health care provider, licensed by the states to promote health and provide care.

Check out their music video CVS sells poison The song at
www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjpqXQc4tKg or search for "CVS sells poison on YouTube. Over 6,000 views so far.

Last week, CVS Pharmacy was called upon "...to stop advertising, promoting, distributing and selling lethal, addictive cigarettes at its over 7,000 stores."

Earlier this year CVS's public relations department stated, "As a healthcare provider, we acknowledge that the sale of tobacco products in our stores is a challenging issue."

According to this Project's Director, Terence A. Gerace, PhD, "CVS should announce plans to stop selling cigarettes before Christmas 2011. Walgreens and Rite Aid will have to follow suit."

9-5-2-1-0 Scavenger Hunt in Danville

Check out this fun and educational scavenger hunt conducted by the fine folks at Virginia Tech and the Dan River Partnership for a Healthy Community.

At the October 8th River Festival in Danville, kids were given a clue card and challenged to find the answers to questions about healthy living. Their results would send them to various stations numbered 9-5-2-1-0 (for 9 hours of sleep, 5 fruits and veggies per day, 2 hours or less or screen time, 1 hour of physical activity and 0 sugary beverages). As you can tell from the photos, kids and parents alike had a great time and were given an adventurous opportunity to learn some healthy activities for the entire family!