The Health leaders plan to meet the Lansing school officials to discuss intensifying educational efforts to get people to wash their hands. That’s the most important key in preventing the virus. Out of the 40 local cases there are now 20 known cases that the lab confirmed was shigellosis, most of the cases are students at Willow Elementary School.

In September 1998 in Willits, California, some 45 people, including eight restaurant workers, tested positive for Shigella bacteria. Four people were hospitalized, and more than 200 cases were suspected. Many restaurants closed temporarily while officials investigated.

Michelle Charis is a senior at Sexton and a participant in the Young Publishers Club sponsored by the Michigan Bulletin which meets at the Magic Johnson Foundation Creation Station located at the Black Child and Family Institute - 835 W. Genesee, Lansing MI.

Parental prohibitions and social norms have curtailed tendencies toward smoking among African Americans teenagers and women according to a National Health Institute survey of 30,660 African Americans and 209,828 Whites ages 18-64. The data suggests that cultural preventive influences have been more effective than cessation programs in reducing smoking rates among African Americans. There is a higher percentage of lifelong nonsmokers among Blacks.

Despite the socio-economic factors that suggest money, knowledge of the negative health effects and a clear understanding of big tobacco targeting of the African American community would have a major influence on Blacks quitting smoking, once they’ve started, Blacks are more likely to be lifetime nonsmokers than Whites.

Comparing gender, educational levels, age, marital status and geographic region, the difference between Black and White cessation rates have been reduced

EAST LANSING MI - Crystal Apple Award winners: Lansing School District Superintendent E. Sharon Banks (left) and Black Child and Family Institute Board of Directors Chairperson Martha M. Bibbs were among the honorees at the Kellogg Center on Oct. 29, 2004.

MSU President designate and Provost, Dr. Lou Anna K. Simon provided keynote remarks.
Local award recipients also includes: James Calvin McCray, Professor Emeritus, Dept. of Teacher Education at MSU and Eugene Pernell, Professor Emeritus, Dept. of Counseling, Educational Psychology and Special Education at the MSU College of Education. They were among 30 distinguished educators who received Michigan State University's College of Education Crystal Apple Award.
The award is a tribute to outstanding educators.

considerably in recent years according to Dr. Gary King, associate professor of bio-behavioral health in the College of Health and Human Development.

African Americans reported fewer former smokers or tobacco “quitters” (14.6 percent) than did whites (25.8 percent) in the period of 1990-2000. After 1994, the trend became less pronounced. During the same decade, an annual average percentage of Blacks who said that they had never taken up smoking was 59.4, compared to 48.7 for whites.

Community based initiatives have increasingly pinpointed high rates of smoking among Black-American adults over the past decade and beyond. They also sought to reduce those rates through multidisciplinary and culturally appropriate programs aimed at both smoking prevention and cessation.

This study was partially funded by the Minority International Training Program of the Fogarty International Center at the National Institutes of Health.

Clifford Bailey is an LCC freshman and a participant in the Young Publishers Club sponsored by the Michigan Bulletin which meets at the Magic Johnson Foundation Creation Station located at the Black Child and Family Institute - 835 W. Genesee, Lansing MI.