Dr. Salim Surani

Tobacco Kills People

Tobacco Kills everything

President's Mission Message

The It’s Your Life Foundation (IYLF) is a non-profit organization whose mission is to serve and educate our community locally and globally to make better life choices. The program has been funded in partnership with local businesses, local, regional and national foundations, and physicians.

Schools play an imperative role in shaping student tobacco use behaviors. The popularity of videos among children can be exploited to deliver the antismoking message in an effective way. Antismoking education programs should train the students in refusal skills, involve parents, teachers, and peers in smoking prevention activities, and proved adult role modeling of nonsmoking behaviors.  The video-based smoking education program used in this study conveyed all of the above very effectively in the form of a cartoon video and a cartoon book based on a video.  Studies of a multimedia (video and book) educational program can be used to capture the attention of the children, educate, and reinforce retention about the ill effects of smoking. The AntE Tobacco Education Program can be very useful as a part of a comprehensive anti-tobacco curriculum in school systems. The AntE Tobacco Education Program in the last 5 years has impacted 38,000 children in South Texas. We will continue to conduct the anti-tobacco program among children in the first, second, and third grade by using a cartoon based tool designed by Dr. Guntupalli from Baylor College of Medicine, and sponsored by the Chest Foundation.

The AntE Tobacco Education Program is successful with the help of physicians, nurses, medical students, and other community partners who have dedicated their time. Along with providing us with the necessary funding to distribute the anti-tobacco education books to every child who participates. For children who chose not to smoke or use tobacco in any form in their teen and adult life, our mission is accomplished.  So far we have reached more than 40,000 kids regionally.

We have also recognized that sleep quality, quantity and education among teen is lacking significantly. In our technology driven society today, poor sleep hygiene has reached an epidemic proportions among the adolescent population. Therefore it is important to address the growing issue, because inadequate sleep hygiene can cause fatigue, irritability, poor concentration, obesity, and hyperactivity amongst many other problems. Studies have shown that there is an inverse relationship between hours of sleep and the risk of obesity.  As an adolescent sleeps less, the risk of obesity dramatically increases. A sufficient amount of available data shows that teens have delayed Circadian Rhythms, which increases risks of sleep deprivation. This can affect the potential risk of obesity, sleep related complications, and can lead to a vicious sleep cycle.  We are undertaking to develop the educational program of TEEN educating TEEN with the involvement of local Teens who will help in designing, and making of the animated movie on sleep education, and then implementing the pilot project in local school, which can serve as a benchmark for replicating in other areas. 

In addition the foundation has also undertaken the initiative to organize regional conferences of high quality to improve the nursing and respiratory therapist education to help them keep up-to-date with latest, and hence improving patient care.

I am grateful for the success of the AntE-Tobacco and Sleep Education Campaign’s. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the volunteers and their families, physicians, nurses, medical students, and community volunteers. With your help this would not have been possible.

Contributions are welcome for the support of this program. You may donate via credit card, PayPal or check. Contributions are tax deductible. We look forward to serving the community locally, nationally, and internationally in the near future. I am so ever grateful.

Sincerely,

Salim Surani, MD, MPH, MSHM, FACP, FCCP, FAASM

Founding President, It’s Your Life Foundation