Field Placement: Asian Pacific Partners for Empowerment and Leadership (APPEAL)
Location: Oakland, CA
Preceptor: Rod Lew, MPH and Tonya Lang, MPH, CHES
Student Name: Karen Lee
Year: 2002

APPEAL stands for Asian Pacific Partners for Empowerment and Leadership, a non-profit organization whose goal is to reduce and prevent tobacco use among Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPI). APPEAL is a national network of organizations located in Oakland, California. The internship consisted of two projects; the main project was to convene a meeting in Washington, D.C. of national AAPI organizations to discuss the issue of tobacco industry sponsorship. The second project was to address the use of tobacco within the AAPI lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community through educational outreach. This internship provided the unique opportunity to work with two preceptors, Rod Lew, MPH and Tonya Lang, MPH, CHES.

The meeting was titled "Beginning the Dialogue: Finding Alternatives to Tobacco Funding for AAPI Communities." This project is the first of its kind to gather national AAPI organizations to discuss tobacco sponsorship issues. This topic is especially pertinent as non-profit organizations have always had difficulty obtaining sufficient funding to sustain their programs. The tobacco industry in an attempt to improve their public relations and image has allocated millions of dollars to support non-profit organizations. This is also a successful method to advertise and target specific communities. This meeting was a way for APPEAL to counter and increase the awareness of the tobacco industry's tactics. The three month long internship culminated in a meeting in Washington, D.C. on September 23, 2002.

The second project was APPEAL's first strategic move to address tobacco use among the AAPI LGBT community. The rates of tobacco use are extraordinarily high within particular ethnic groups (i.e., Pacific Islanders, and Southeast Asians) and within the LGBT community. Since there is no research, data or programs targeted for AAPI LGBTs in tobacco control, the project was to outreach to AAPI LGBT and LGBT tobacco organizations of the need to include this population in tobacco control programming.

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