Waltham, Mass. – May 30 – For the third year in a row, three elementary school students from Weymouth have earned top honors in the 2014 Massachusetts Medical Society and MMS Alliance Anti-Tobacco Poster Contest, an annual educational event to alert schoolchildren to the dangers of tobacco and smoking.
Shawn Hogan, a second-grade student at the Ralph Talbot School; Natalie Svagdis of Braintree, a second-grade student at the Sacred Heart School; and Marina Russell, a third-grader at the Academy Avenue School, were three of just 12 winners selected from more than 3,500 entries to the competition. The contest is open to youngsters in grades 1-6 throughout Massachusetts.
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Hogan’s entry, Don’t smoke or you’ll look like me, showed the differences in facial appearance between a smoker and non-smoker. Svagdis’s entry, Don’t smoke or you will be a slow poke, portrayed the effects of smoking on walking and running; and Russell’s poster, Second-hand smoke can make others sick, showed how second-hand smoke can affect the health of others.
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The competition, open to students in grades 1-6 throughout Massachusetts, 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 May 28 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 2015 calendar produced by the Medical Society that will be distributed to schools, pediatricians, and family physicians across the Commonwealth.
Presenting the awards were Richard Pieters, M.D., President of the Massachusetts Medical Society; Alan Ashare, M.D., Chair of the Medical Society’s Committee on Student Health and Sports Medicine; and Paula Madison, President of the MMS Alliance.
This year marked the 19th year that the Massachusetts Medical Society has conducted the contest. To view winning entries, visit www.massmed.org/tobacco
About the MMS The Massachusetts Medical Society, with more than 24,000 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 NEJM Journal Watch alerts and publications covering 13 specialties. The Society is also a leader in continuing medical education for health care professionals throughout Massachusetts, conducting a variety of medical education programs for physicians and health care professionals. Founded in 1781, MMS is the oldest continuously operating medical society in the country.
