Pharmacy students spread awareness on smoking and skin cancer

The Pharmacy Week provided students with helpful tips on spending a pleasant and harmless summer.

May 14, 2009

Posters raise awareness against smoking.

A pharmacy student measuring her peer's blood pressure on the first day of the Pharmacy Week.

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April 24 felt like a day at the beach for LAU–Byblos students. An aroma of sunblock wafted through the air while music echoed on campus.

“It doesn’t even feel like school,” a student chuckled as she passed through the maze of umbrellas strewn about, inviting students to relax under.

It was, in fact, a skin awareness campaign organized by the School of Pharmacy and NAPHASS students, as part of the sixth annual Pharmacy Week, April 22–24.

Pharmacy students walked around campus to distribute sunscreen to onlookers and inform them of the harms of sun exposure and the means of effective skin protection.

Most participants “knew about protecting themselves, but they didn’t know about how to choose the right lotion with the [proper] sun protection factor,” and how frequently they should apply it, said Pharm.D. student Ahmad Saad.

The event also informed students about the risks of smoking through educational posters and videos on diseases caused by tobacco use.

The organizers also had a friendly way to attract smokers’ attention. “We had a small setting with hubble-bubbles and we invited people to sit with us and eat popcorn instead of smoking,” said Lama Kheir, who’s in her last professional year.

The event also included a poison prevention campaign, blood pressure measurement, and the Pharmacy Day (April 24), during which high school students from across Lebanon visited the campus and learned about the pharmacy program.

“We try to involve the [pharmacy] students in activities of community outreach and give people information that might prove useful to them in the next three months,” said Dr. Aline Saad, clinical assistant professor and coordinator of the Pharmacy Week.

The experience was rewarding for the pharmacy students, said Ahmad. “It is essential … to have this kind of community work,” along with the regular coursework, he said.

This way, “you feel you give more and you feel they [community members] appreciate more the work of a pharmacist,” he added.

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