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Public health and the power of individual action

¹ Chairman FAMRI Medical Advisory Board, John D MacArthur Professor of Health Policy, Emeritus, Department of Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
² Professor of Family and Preventive Medicine, University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, San Diego, California, USA
³ Chairman, Department of Health Behavior, Division of Cancer Prevention & Population Sciences, Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, New York, USA

Correspondence to:
K Michael Cummings
PhD, MPH, Department of Health Behavior, Division of Cancer Prevention & Population Sciences, Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Elm and Carlton Streets, Buffalo, New York 14263, USA; Michael.Cummings@roswellpark.org

Keywords: flight attendants; lawyers

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Dramatic changes in smoking behaviour occurred over the half century since cigarette smoking was identified as a cause of human disease, and these changes are a major public health accomplishment.¹ Perhaps no component of this change has been more dramatic than the reduction in people’s involuntary exposure to tobacco smoke pollution. The fraction of indoor workers protected by a total ban on smoking in the workplace has risen from 3% in 1986² to nearly 70% in 1999,³ and serum cotinine levels in non-smokers declined 70% between 1988 and 1998.⁴ Much of this progress can be attributed to the courageous and determined actions of individuals applying our advances in the medical sciences. This issue both celebrates those individuals and details their accomplishments.

Almost immediately following Surgeon General Jesse Steinfeld’s articulation of involuntary smoking as a public health issue and his declaration of a non-smokers bill of rights,⁵ airlines became the leading . . . [Full text of this article]