Two Andover Girls Recognized for Anti-Smoking Posters

This press release was provided by Massachuestts Medical Society.

Emai Lai and Skylar Hadad, both sixth-grade students at the Doherty Middle School in Andover, have won top honors in the 2011 Anti-Tobacco Poster Contest, an annual educational event to alert schoolchildren to the dangers of tobacco and smoking sponsored by the Massachusetts Medical Society and its Alliance.

Lai and Hadad were two of just 12 winners selected from more than 3,500 entries to the competition. The contest is open to youngsters in grades 1-6 throughout Massachusetts. Lai’s entry, listing three major reasons why smoking is bad, was titled, Why I won’t start smoking, and Hadad’s entry was called, 4,000 chemicals inhaled in 1 puff.

Along with the other winners, the two were honored at a special event at the State House on June 9.  Presenting the awards to the winners were Lynda Young, M.D., President of the Massachusetts Medical Society; Janet Kent, M.D., member of the Medical Society’s Committee on Student Health and Sports Medicine; and Gladys Chan, President of the MMS Alliance.

The competition asks students to create an original poster that ties in with certain themes for their grade. The themes by grades are: Grades 1 and 2: Show how tobacco is bad for your body; Grades 3 and 4: Show how using tobacco affects other people; Grades 5 and 6: Why I won’t start.  Four entries are selected in each category.

The winning entries, chosen on the basis of originality, artistic merit, and relevance to the theme for the grades, will be included in a 2012 calendar produced by the Medical Society that will be distributed to schools, pediatricians, and family physicians across the Commonwealth. This year marks the 16^th year that the Massachusetts Medical Society has conducted the contest. To view all 12 winning entries, visit www.massmed.org/AntiTobacco2011