The Department of Public Health (DPH) at the College of Health Sciences (CHS-QU) hosted a virtual presentation titled Towards a Tobacco-Free Campus: What Can We Learn from Regional Experience (the case of AUB)?” Which was part of the ‘Health Promoting Universities: QU Health-y’ virtual initiative that was launched in November 2020.

The virtual presentation was held on Monday with a keynote webinar by Dr Rima Nakkash, Associate Professor at Department of Health Promotion and Community Health at American University of Beirut. Dr Manar Elhassan, the Head of the Department of Public Health, she welcomed the speakers, the audience and expressed her enthusiasm of learning from a known expert in the region.

Dr Rima highlighted the importance of a community-based approach by cross collaborating across the university to build a high-level task force to review the evidence, develop a tobacco-free campus policy, and plan for all aspects of implementation, enforcement, and evaluation.

The implementation of a tobacco-free campus aims on building a safe and healthy environment that protects people exposure from involuntary exposure to secondhand smoke by reducing people’s triggers to smoke and supports those who wish to quit to do so. Most importantly, it also aims on preventing the creation of new smoker youth.

Dr Manar said, “Today’s talk is relevant and timely as an important initiative of having a tobacco-free campus at Qatar University in line with thousands of universities around the world that promote health and wellbeing by prohibiting the use of tobacco products on campus”

The event was concluded with an interactive session in which our guest speaker addressed the audience and students’ questions.