Eco-Chic Lifestyle Change Week 2: Weekly Update

• My Smart goal is to drink at least 12oz of water daily and to make sure I am not drinking it from a plastic bottle. I want to mainly get my water from the drinking fountain at school or from my faucet at home.  So far this is going well other than I am not a huge fan of water (weird, I know) so a few of the days I did not drink all 12oz. but I am pleased that when I was drinking water it was coming from the facet or the fountain.
• It helped me to be successful by when going grocery shopping to not buy any plastic water bottles.  I also succeeded in this by making sure that I had a reusable water bottle that I could keep filling.  It was a challenge for me to drink water though when I had other choices surrounding me such as pop or juice. To deal with my challenges I am going to buy less juice and try and buy no pop the next time I go grocery shopping so that when I am at my apt. water is one of my only choices which will force me to drink more of it.
• I felt good that I was sticking to my goal for the most part and happy that I am contributing to my well being and benefiting the environment at the same time.  This also made me feel successful.  
• I learned that it is possible for me to be able to stick to my goal and that there are ways to go about doing so!
• I will continue with this change for next week.  I will keep the same goal and continue to work towards it because I think right now this is a good and reasonable goal for me to keep working at. After I have success with this goal I will try and up my water intake consumption. 
• Picture from here! 
• Blogged for the Eco-Chic Lifestyle Change Week 2 hosted by Amy@Amy in the Rain
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Advocacy Project: Healthy People/THOMAS

-The goal that i chose is Focus Area 27 which is dealing with tobacco use and the exact goal is to reduce illness, disability and death related to tobacco use and exposure to second hand smoke.  The objective that I chose to focus on was: initiation of tobacco use (27-3).
 -The data for this objective is not available at the time unfortunately. Here is the Progress Quotient Chart to show that.
-Some emerging issues with this goal would be:

•  Use of and risks from potentially reduced exposure products (PREPs) that purportedly deliver lower amounts of toxic, carcinogenic, or addictive agents to the user compared with conventional products
• Smokeless tobacco
• Internet sale of tobacco products 
• Youth access to retail tobacco is declining so access to tobacco products through other sources

-Information in the bullets above come from here.

Some disparities deal with race and gender or income and/or disability.  To go into more detail objective 27-3 has the most concern with White (non Hispanic) for this issue. To see the chart for this and to view more information click here.

H.R.1432 : Stop Adolescent Smoking Without Excessive Bureaucracy Act of 2009
-Introduced in House Energy and Commerce
Official title=to reduce youth usage of tobacco products, to enhance State efforts to eliminate retail sales of tobacco products to minors, and for other purposes.
-Latest Major Action=3/11/2009 Referred to House committee. Status: Referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
-Sponsor: Rep Blackburn, Marsha [TN-7] (introduced 3/11/2009)--(There are 4 cosponsors.)
 -Recommendation: Vote YES for H.R.1432 Stop Adolescent Smoking Without Excessive Bureaucracy Act
--Information from above came from here.
 --Picture from here.