Commonwealth Club Hosts Smoking Cessation Summit "End the Epidemic"

Business Wire, June 13, 2008

SAN FRANCISCO -- The Commonwealth Club:

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The CDC's Dr. Julie Gerberding and NBC's Medical Expert Dr. Nancy Snyderman headline a panel on why people continue to smoke cigarettes despite the fact it is commonly known tobacco is hazardous to one's health. After 30 years of anti-tobacco measures and negative sentiment, cigarettes still kill more Americans than AIDS, murder, suicide, car accidents and fires combined. Amongst a myriad of issues to be addressed, the panel will explore why an increasingly disproportionate number of minorities are smoking compared to other communities, discuss whether treating nicotine addiction is financially viable and, if so, who should pay for it, and look at why we still see cigarettes in movies.

Dr. Julie Louise Gerberding, who leads the CDC and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, is also a Medicine Professor at Emory University and University of California at San Francisco. Dr. Nancy Snyderman, NBC News' Chief Medical Editor, reports for Today, NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, Dateline NBC and MSNBC. She is part of the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at the University of Pennsylvania's staff. Before her work at NBC, she led Johnson & Johnson's Understanding Health, a public health education program, and was the medical correspondent for ABC News. Snyderman will provide free copies of her book Medical Myths That Can Kill You and the 101 Truths That Will Save, Extend and Improve Your Life.