Anti-Smoking Initiative Wins Award

Anti-smoking group “Aufklärung gegen Tabak” (Education Against Tobacco) receives award from the German Federal Government.

Anti-smoking group “Aufklärung gegen Tabak” (Education Against Tobacco) is one of seven winners of the federal award for social initiatives in Germany (startsocial competition) supervised and signed by the German Chancellor. The organization received a €5000 prize at a special ceremony in the Chancellery in Berlin, attended by German Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel.  The group, founded in 2011 by Titus Brinker, a medical student at Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, enlists medical students to provide a strong anti-smoking message to 10-15 year old students of secondary schools. Today, 600 medical student members of Aufklärung gegen Tabak visit German schools and provide approximately 10,000 students per year with information that the secondary school students can use to make informed decisions about whether or not to smoke and use tobacco products.  DZL speaker and chair, Prof. Dr. Werner Seeger, along with DZL principal investigators Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Kummer and Prof. Dr. Veronika Grau serve on the scientific advisory board of Aufklärung gegen Tabak.