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Home | About Us A History of the Tobacco-Free QC
Tobacco use has various effects on the citizens in the Quad City community. Each of the agencies involved with the TFQC were seeing these effects on a daily basis. These effects include lost of productivity, rising health care costs, decreased quality of life and lives lost prematurely. Rather than each of these agencies working independently to manage one or more of these health issues for a specific group of community members based on a geographic, economic or diagnostic basis, TFQC members recognized the synergism created by working together. Seeing the Quad Cities as a single community rather than a jigsaw puzzle of individual cities, neighborhoods, or demographic clusters, TFQC is able to work together to focus on changing health behavior. TFQC brings about change by focusing its efforts in a variety of areas that relate to tobacco and tobacco use. These areas include:
Workgroups have been formed to address each of theses areas in an organized and coordinated approach. New members who have an interest addressing tobacco in an effort to have a healthier community are always welcome. Our activities to date have included promoting the American Cancer Society’s (www.cancer.org), Great American Smoke Out (www.cancer.org/gasp/) and the Tobacco-Free Kids Kick Butts Day (www.kickbuttsday.org/). We have developed this web site and are working with area restaurants to promote some-free dining. We sponsor cessation classes, provide educational materials to our area educators as well as deliver the Smoke-Free That’s Me curriculum to second, fourth, and sixth grade students in both Scott and Rock Island County. We have a speaker’s bureau available for delivering presentations addressing the different aspects of tobacco and tobacco use. We have partnered with local law enforcement agencies to increase the number of businesses who are in compliance with the law as it relates to the sell of tobacco to underage youth. We have developed a “Time to Quit” tool for local physicians and provide smoking cessation counseling for expectant moms through “That’s It-I Quit!” Smoking is the number one preventable cause of death in our country while the exposure to secondhand smoke is the number three preventable cause of death. Over 400,000 people die from smoking related deaths each year while 53,000 die from exposure to secondhand smoke. Reducing these numbers can happen through community members like you who want to create a healthier environment for future generations. The TFQC supports the vision of the Quad City Health Initiative (www.qchealthinitiative.org).
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In a visionary effort to unite many local resources to improve the health of the Quad City community, the Tobacco-Free QC Coalition (TFQC) was formed. At our initial meeting in September of 1998, there were five Quad City health care organizations that came together. These five organizations have now been joined by numerous other health care organizations. These health care organizations along with representatives from local law enforcement, schools, and other various groups make up the membership of this bi-state coalition.
