Education Against Tobacco (EAT) was founded by the German medical student Titus J. Brinker (TJB) on 01/01/2012. After his first year of medicine, TJB learned about the general idea of the program Stand Tall Against Tobacco (STAT) at Texas A&M university where medical students teach minors about tobacco.
Back in Germany, TJB decided to develop an own, research-based concept for a multinational network to promote tobacco prevention and cessation with a multifold approach all over the globe. As the network spread fastly to almost all medical schools in Germany, TJB initiated the foundation of EAT in Innsbruck, Austria in November 2012 where it has been constantly growing since in the hands of the Austrian Medical Students Association. In April 2013 TJB initiated the program in Switzerland where the medical students Murat Yildiz, Kilian Maier and Raphael Jaeger lead the group which is sustainably educating surrounding schools since and supported by local faculty. In June of 2014 the German chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel personally awarded EAT with the national award for its exceptional growth, professionalism and success.
In March 2015 TJB observed clinical excellence in pulmonary medicine at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital being hosted by the clinical director of the pulmonary medicine department and a renown pediatrician from Boston Children’s Hospital. In addition, he shadowed the NEJM Editor-in-Chief for two weeks. During this time, he convinced local faculty from Harvard Medical School to support the international expansion of the project including the NEJM Editor-in-Chief. TJB translated all concepts, set up an international website (educationtobacco.org) and addressed fellow medical students from all countries worldwide to follow his instructions to found the project in their home countries. As a consequence, the project was founded in Sudan by Sawsan Zeinedin and in Bangladesh by Imtiaz Hafiz both in May 2015 and has been growing to additional countries since. For updates on our international expansion visit: educationtobacco.org
Medical students of the first group of Education Against Tobacco in Gießen, Germany. Back row: Felix Neumann, Titus J. Brinker, Andreas Owczarek and Stefan Henkel. Front row.: Yavuz Yilmaz, Svea Holtz, Laura Schwab, Alexandra Huhn and Luisa Hartrampf
Beatrix Löschenberger and Julia Drnek start the first class room seminar in Austria.
The founders of the first group in Switzerland (Kilian Meier, Raphael Jäger, Tania Weber, Murat Yildiz), Photo: 20 Minuten
