Some online ammunition for fighting tobacco addiction

The Inuit Tuttarvingat section of the National Aboriginal Health Organization launched its new resource web site and listserv for Inuit smoking cessation counsellors, health-care providers and smokers on Nov. 16 — just in time to coincide with National Addictions Week, Nov. 15 to 23.

The new website at, www.InuitTobaccofree.ca, provides information about research on tobacco and how to quit and reduce tobacco use as well as health promotion materials which can be used in Inuit communities.

You can even take an on-line quiz to see how much you know about smoking.

The goal behind the Inuktitut-English website is to provide Inuit with easy-to-access information about addictions to cigarettes, chewing tobacco and snuff and how to combat these addictions.

More than half of all Inuit adults smoke daily in Canada, according to Statistics Canada’s 2006 aboriginal peoples survey.

“There are so many good, helpful materials out there in northern communities about the risks of using tobacco, such as health promotion campaigns, quitting tips for smokers, and posters and videos in the Inuit language. We wanted to put many of these on one website for people to access,” says Dianne Kinnon, director of Inuit Tuttarvingat.

The website also providers links to research reports, journal articles, cessation and quitting tips, and tobacco-related news from the North.

Inuit smoking cessation counsellors and others working to reduce tobacco use can also join an “Inuit tobacco-free network” to share documents and other information through an electronic mailing list or listserv.

Inuit Tuttarvingat decided to create the network after Inuit and others working in tobacco reduction asked for a way to share current research and smoking cessation materials, a Nov. 13 news release says.

Documents on the website are posted online in the language they were created in, although some English documents will be translated into Inuit language dialects.

The website also wants to help provide distance education training to 25 Inuit health and wellness workers.

By using the www.InuitTobaccofree.ca site and other training materials, these workers will be able to learn more about tobacco cessation, become aware of the resources available to Inuit, and learn how to use these cessation materials in their own work at the community level.

The distance education training will begin in the coming months, Inuit Tuttarvingat says.