Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society
College of Community Health Sciences | University of Alabama
IntroductionArticlesExhibitionsVitrineStudy GuidesAbstractsResearch PostersPresentationsArt of MedicineInternshipsVideosInterviewsThe Move
“The curated exhibitions offered by the Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society are an excellent example of how social history, in this case pertaining to one of our most significant public health problems, can be presented online in an enlightening, educational, and entertaining way….
“The Center’s website (https://csts.ua.edu) functions much like a hybrid of a museum, investigative reporting, documentary film, and popular treatise recounting the rise and decline of cigarette smoking in America. It certainly deserves the attention of anyone interested in the recent history of public health in America.”
–Jack Coulehan, MD
Senior Fellow, Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care, and Bioethics, Stony Brook University
Multimedia Exhibitions: Review of the Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society
The Pharos, Journal of Alpha Omega Alpha, the National Medical Honor Society, 2019
Mission
The mission of the University of Alabama Center for Study of Tobacco and Society (CSTS), founded in 1999, is to explore, investigate, compare and contrast the historical and contemporary aspects of the tobacco issue and the role and influence of tobacco in society through an interdisciplinary approach that involves research, professional education, and community outreach. The Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society serves as an international resource on tobacco problems.
Participants
Alan Blum, MD
Founder and Director
Professor, Department of Family Medicine
Gerald Leon Wallace, MD, Endowed Chair in Family Medicine
College of Community Health Sciences
The University of Alabama
Kevin Bailey, MA
Collection Manager
Digital Archivist and Exhibition Curator
The University of Alabama
Eric Solberg, MS
Senior Vice President, Academic and Research Affairs
Associate Faculty, McGovern Center for Humanities & Ethics
Assistant Professor, Family & Community Medicine
The University of Texas Health Sciences Center at Houston Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences
CSTS Medical Activism Advisor
Edward Anselm, MD
Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Medical Director, Southeast Region
Aetna CVS Health
CSTS Smoking Cessation Advisor
Robert Riter, PhD
Assistant Professor
Marie Drolet Bristol-EBSCO Endowed Professor
Program in Archival Studies Coordinator
The University of Alabama
CSTS Archival Advisor
Original Articles Published in Major Journals
Tobacco control: all research, no action
Invited commentary by Alan Blum, MD and Ransome Eke, MD, MPH in The Lancet, June 19, 2021 to mark the World Health Organization’s World No Tobacco Day.
Article by Robert B. Riter, PhD, Kevin Bailey, MA, and Jeff Hirschy, PhD, in American Behavioral Scientist, 2021.
A Flea’s Tumescence: Alan Blum, MD on Exhibitions, Activism, Irony, and Collaboration
Interview with Alan Blum, MD by David Lee in American Behavioral Scientist, 2021.
Seeing COVID-19 through a cloud of cigarette smoke
Article by Alan Blum, MD and Eric Solberg, MS in The Cancer Letter, September 18, 2020.
FDA e-cigarette flavoring ban leaves a bad taste
Article by Alan Blum, MD in The Cancer Letter, January 3, 2020.
The unKOOL, unfiltered history of menthol cigarettes
Article by Alan Blum, MD in The Cancer Letter, May 7, 2021.
When it comes to fighting smoking, Alabama still isn’t hacking it
Article by Alan Blum, MD on AL.com, June 3, 2021.
Article by Alan Blum, MD in The Art Newspaper, June, 2020
Newspaper Commentaries and Op-Eds
What Does FDA Authorization of E-Cigarette Mean for Tobacco Industry?
Commentary by Alan Blum, MD in UA Preview, October 18, 2021.
Exhibitions
The Center produced four original new exhibitions in 2020-21, based entirely on our vast collection.
▼ Click the images below to visit the Exhibitions ▼
“Sports + Tobacco = A Losing Team”
“Fault: Tennis, Tobacco, and Virginia Slims”
“Baseball & Tobacco”
“Touchdown Tobacco”
Sports + Tobacco = A Losing Team marked the Center’s return to museum exhibitions when it was put on display at the Paul W. Bryant Museum in January 2020.
WVUA-23’s coverage of the exhibition’s premiere.
Other Center projects in 2020-21 include expansion of Oral Histories; several focused exhibits (for example, “Depictions of Smoking in Pharmaceutical Advertising,” “A History of ‘Safer Cigarettes,'” and “‘Tobacco Heart’: Cigarette Smoking and Cardiovascular Disease”); an online version of a museum exhibition created in 2013 (“The Surgeon General Vs. The Marlboro Man: Who Really Won?”); digitization by the Center’s graduate research assistant interns of Center collections (notably, “The Medical Journal Editorship [documents for the] First Medical Journal Theme Issues on the World Tobacco Pandemic”); and new webpages on Digital Media Addiction, Marijuana, and other subjects.
The Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society: Oral Histories
“Confronting America’s Smoking Pandemic: A Timeline in Four Parts”
“The Surgeon General Vs. The Marlboro Man:
Who Really Won?”
“Tobacco Heart: Cigarette Smoking and Cardiovascular Health”
“Depictions of Smoking in Pharmaceutical Advertising”
“Advertising in the Journal of the American Medical Association”
Internships at the Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society
“Medical Journal Editorship Collection Of Alan Blum, MD: The First Medical Journal Theme Issues On The World Tobacco Pandemic”
“Digital Media Addiction: A Modern Phenomenon Through the Lens of the Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society”
“Tanning Bedlam”
“Dr. John Cannell, Family Physician Who Refused to See New Patients Who Smoked”
“Stan Sawyer, Salem Cigarettes & ‘Space Hoppers'”
“Smoke-Filled Room:
The American Medical Association Resident Physician Section’s support for anti-smoking only went so far…”
“‘Safer’ Cigarettes”
“Lorillard’s KENT Micronite Filter”
“Cigarette Ad Role Models: Stories of Tragedy and Regret”
“C. Everett Koop, MD Surgeon General of The United States | 1982-1989”
“Going For (Old) Gold: Kent, Lorillard, and the 1960 Olympic Games”
“Mild As May: How Cigarette Makers Sold Women a Pack of Lies”
(Upcoming)
“Keep’em Smokin’: Tobacco in World War II”
(Upcoming)
Vitrine Exhbitions
The Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society’s new location features a display area, or vitrine, in the main hall of the Northeast Medical Building, in which the Center has been creating displays to complement its online exhibitions.
“Cartoonists Take Up Smoking”
Vitrine exhibit December 2020 – April 2021
“Cartoonists Take Up Smoking”
Accompanying Slides
“Sports + Tobacco = A Losing Team”
Vitrine exhibit May 2021 – September 2021
“Sports + Tobacco = A Losing Team”
Accompanying Slides
“Mild As May: How Cigarette Companies Sold Women a Pack of Lies”
Vitrine exhibit October 2021 – February 2022
“Mild As May: How Cigarette Companies Sold Women a Pack Of Lies”
Accompanying Slides
Study Guides
Curriculum: The Makin’s of a Nation: Tobacco & World War I
Study Guide: Stamping Out Smoking: Anti-Smoking Stamps From Around the World
Study Guide: Sports + Tobacco = A Losing Team
Abstracts for Presentations at National and International Conferences
Exhibitions as public health interventions: Best of the Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society
Abstract by Alan Blum, MD, submitted to the National Conference on Tobacco or Health, 2022.
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Exploring the interface between JUUL use and digital media addiction
Abstract by Alan Blum, MD, and Sabrina Jung, submitted to the National Conference on Tobacco or Health, 2022.
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Cigarette advertising role models: Stories of tragedy, anger, and regret
Abstract by Alan Blum, MD, submitted to the National Conference on Tobacco or Health, 2022.
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“Cartoonists Take Up Smoking”: Anti-tobacco advocacy through the eyes of political artists
Abstract by Alan Blum, MD, submitted to the National Conference on Tobacco or Health, 2022.
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“Fault!” How Virginia Slims and the “Original 9” set back women’s health
Abstract by Alan Blum, MD, and Kevin Bailey, MA, submitted to the National Conference on Tobacco or Health, 2022.
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Unsung heroes in the effort to curb cigarette smoking, passive smoking, and tobacco advertising
Abstract by Alan Blum, MD, submitted to the National Conference on Tobacco or Health, 2022.
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Why is there not a U.S. anti-smoking postage stamp to promote public health?
Abstract by Alan Blum, MD, submitted to the National Conference on Tobacco or Health, 2022.
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The Filter Fraud: Banning the sale of filtered cigarettes as a key new strategy for tobacco control
Abstract by Alan Blum, MD and Thomas Novotny, MD, MPHD, DSc (Hon), submitted to the National Conference on Tobacco or Health, 2022.
Presented at the American Public Health Association Annual Conference, September 2020, and the Union World Conference on Lung Health, October 2021.
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What haven’t we been teaching the public about the effects of cigarette smoking?
Abstract by Alan Blum, MD, Joshua Kelley, and Saunjoo Yoon, PhD, RN, submitted to the National Conference on Tobacco or Health, 2022.
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Vaping cannabidiol (CBD): What clinicians and consumers need to know
Abstract by Alan Blum, MD and Christopher Froehlich, submitted to the National Conference on Tobacco or Health, 2022.
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What percentage of states’ tobacco excise taxes and MSA payments is dedicated to curbing smoking?
Abstract by Alan Blum, MD and Ransome Eke, MD, Ph.D., submitted to the National Conference on Tobacco or Health, 2022.
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Tony Schwartz: Pioneer of paid anti-smoking advertising in the mass media
Abstract by Alan Blum, MD, and Philip Wilbur, MA, submitted to the National Conference on Tobacco or Health, 2022.
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Healthcare Hypocrite: SIEMENS, the company that helps manufacture cigarettes and detect lung cancer
Abstract by Alan Blum, MD, submitted to the National Conference on Tobacco or Health, 2022.
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Seeing COVID-19 through a cloud of cigarette smoke
Abstract by Alan Blum, MD and Eric Solberg, MS, submitted to the National Conference on Tobacco or Health, 2022.
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Anti-smoking activists, tobacco control bureaucrats, and policy wonks: ways to work together
Abstract by Alan Blum, MD, and Dileep Bal MD, MPH, submitted to the National Conference on Tobacco or Health, 2022.
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Mental health consequences of digital media addiction: Is technology decreasing our happiness?
Abstract by Tomasz Gruchala and Alan Blum, MD, presented at the American College Health Association Annual Conference, May 2020.
Research Posters
Several of the Center’s research posters produced with students at the University of Alabama and colleagues at other universities were recreated as interactive web posters on the Center’s website.
The Detrimental Effects of Smoking On the Musculoskeletal System
Research Poster by Joshua Kelley, Catherine J. Randall Research Scholars Program, The University of Alabama; Alan Blum, MD, The Center of Study of Tobacco and Society, The University of Alabama, 2020.
Cannabidiol (CBD): What Consumers Need To Know
Research Poster by Christopher Froehlich, Catherine J Randall Research Scholar, The University of Alabama; Alan Blum, MD, The University of Alabama Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society, 2020.
Medical Marijuana: Myths and Realities
Research Poster by Christopher J. Froehlich, Catherine J. Randall Research Scholar, University of Alabama; Alan Blum, MD, Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society, University of Alabama, 2020.
The Filter Fraud: Debunking the Myth of “Safer” as a Key New Strategy of Tobacco Control
Research Poster by Alan Blum MD: Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society, University of Alabama School of Medicine; Thomas E. Novotny, MD MPH: San Diego State University, Cigarette Butt Pollution Project, 2021.
The Filter Fraud: Banning the sale of filtered cigarettes as a key new strategy for tobacco control
Version of electronic poster and oral commentary presented at the Union World Conference on Lung Health, October 19-22, 2021
Research Poster by Alan Blum MD: Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society, University of Alabama School of Medicine, & Thomas E. Novotny, MD MPH: San Diego State University, Cigarette Butt Pollution Project, 2021.
Oral Presentation accompanying The Filter Fraud: Banning the sale of filtered cigarettes as a key new strategy for tobacco control Poster by Alan Blum MD: Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society, University of Alabama School of Medicine, & Thomas E. Novotny, MD MPH: San Diego State University, Cigarette Butt Pollution Project, 2021.
Original Presentations
“Polio: Forgotten But Not Gone”
Presentation at Resident Didactics, University of Alabama College of Community Health Sciences by Alan Blum, MD, August 10, 2021.
“Clearing the Air”
Presentation to the Southwest Tribal Tobacco Coalition by Alan Blum, MD, and Kevin Bailey, MA, June 24, 2021.
“Seeing Patients: Compassion and The Art of Medicine”
Presentation to the first-year medical school class, Introduction to Health Humanities, University of Calgary Cumming School of Medicine by Alan Blum, MD, July 21, 2021.
“The ABCs of Smoking and E-Cigarettes”
Presentation by Alan Blum to the Alabama Academy of Family Physicians, June, 2020.
The Art of Medicine Rounds
Renowned physicians from Sir William Osler to Dr. Edward Pellegrino helped remind medical educators that amid the rapid advances in medical technology, pharmacology, and surgery, exposure to the humanities must remain an essential part of training well-rounded, compassionate, and thoughtful physicians. Yet relatively few medical schools provide frequent humanities-based learning experiences. In 2012, recognizing the need to bring together medical students, family medicine residents, faculty, staff, and their families and guests on a regular basis at the University of Alabama College of Community Health Sciences (CCHS) to explore the role of arts, humanities and social sciences perspectives in medical education and the practice of medicine, Dr. Alan Blum implemented a monthly humanities lecture and discussion series, The Art of Medicine Rounds. This interdisciplinary get-together (over a light supper until March 2020, and since then via Zoom) has hosted more than 100 presenters–artists, poets, musicians, dancers, actors, magicians, film-makers, playwrights, novelists, historians, philosophers, photographers, sculptors, sociologists, and story-tellers–from throughout the US and Canada. Faculty members at CCHS faculty and the University of Alabama have also presented at The Art of Medicine Rounds.
The Art of Medicine Rounds Touches Hearts
Article published in On Rounds, 2020
Using Photovoice to Evaluate The Art of Medicine Rounds, A Monthly Humanities Series in A Medical School in the Rural US South
Research proposal by Alan Blum, MD, Mercedes Morales-Aleman, PhD, and Nelle Williams, MSLS to evaluate “The Art of Medicine Rounds”
7-Minute Highlight Reel of “The Art of Medicine Rounds”
Internships: Spring 2021
The Center’s projects for 2021 focused on the arrangement and description of materials, utilizing the online browser-based content management system Omeka. As a result, interns obtained extensive experience creating metadata entries under the Dublin Core standard, a set of fifteen elements for describing resources.
Internships at the Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society
Spring 2021 – Projects
The Center’s projects for 2021 focused on the arrangement and description of materials, utilizing the online browser-based content management system Omeka. As a result, interns obtained extensive experience creating metadata entries under the Dublin Core standard, a set of fifteen elements for describing resources.
Medical Journal Editorship Collection
Medical Journal Editorship Collection on Omeka
Women’s Collection
Universities & Tobacco
Tobacco Headlines
Spring 2021 – Interns
Meaghan Cash, MLIS
Metadata and Research Assistant, College of Charleston
• Tobacco & WWII
• Women and Tobacco
• CSTS Oral Histories Collection
“I am from Indiana, Pennsylvania, an hour east of Pittsburgh, and I was part of the distance learning Master of Library and Information Studies (MLIS) graduate program with the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alabama. I began the program in 2019 after completing my MA in English at the College of Charleston, and my focus was on archival studies. While working for the Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society (CSTS), I learned how to work with digital records and to use the Omeka platform. I was glad to have this opportunity to add practical skills to my education.”
“As an art history undergraduate at the University of Alabama (UA), I paired my curriculum on historical and artifactual analysis with hands-on curatorial experience working with the Paul R. Jones Museum and the UA Gallery, where I had the chance to work with collectors and preservationists in the arrangement of cultural artifacts and artworks for public access. As an MLIS graduate student, part of my pursuit of practical experience included the great opportunity at CSTS to appraise, arrange, and describe records pertaining to the first three issues of medical journals ever devoted entirely to ending the world tobacco pandemic.”
Bradley Thorne, MLIS
• Universities and Tobacco
• Women and Tobacco
• CSTS Oral Histories Collection
“After earning a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies with an emphasis in History from UA in 2017, I returned in 2018 to begin working toward an MLIS degree, which I received in April 2021, with the aim of becoming an archivist. While interning at CSTS, I had a rewarding experience assisting collection manager Kevin Bailey on the ‘Women and Tobacco’ exhibition and helping to catalog the Universities and Tobacco collection.”
Recent Original Videos
2020 overview of the Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society (5 minutes)
Graduate student research intern Caleb Hendrix, who catalogued the Center’s Medical Journal Editorship Collection, interviews Alan Bum, MD in May 2021 about his experiences as editor of the Medical Journal of Australia and the New York State Journal of Medicine and the theme issues on tobacco that he produced at these journals. (35 minutes)
Highlights of the Collection: Advertising – In October 2021 Dr. Blum shared some of the highlights of the Center’s collection of cigarette advertising and promotion. (3 minutes)
Interviews
Over the past year, CSTS took advantage of Zoom technology to conduct interviews with individuals with fascinating stories on aspects of the tobacco industry, cigarette advertising, and anti-smoking activism.
Ron Bloomberg: “All in the Family” writer also penned historic ad calling on Congress to ban cigarette commercials.
Howard Sawyer, MD, on his father Stan Sawyer’s career and voice-over work for Salem Cigarettes.
Attorney Nathan Schachtman, the leading expert defense witness regarding the use of asbestos by the cigarette industry.
Dan Delmonico, Founder and Director, United States Military Ashtray Museum
Moving The Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society to The Northeast Medical Building
In 2020, the Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society (CSTS), moved to a larger state-of-the-art museum and archive space located on the grounds of historic Bryce Hospital. In a major expansion, the University of Alabama had acquired the 168-acre Bryce campus after the hospital built a new facility elsewhere in Tuscaloosa in 2010. The Center’s move, overseen by CSTS Collection Manager Kevin Bailey, was logistically complex and entailed labeling and reconfiguring the placement of 900 archive boxes into specially designed high-density rolling storage shelves. In spite of the challenging relocation and the constraints of the pandemic, the Center did not miss a single day of operations. It continued to serve researchers, students, host interns, and produce exhibitions. The new Center and exhibition vitrine officially opened on June 1, 2020.
Packing, organizing, and moving the Center for the Study for Tobaco and Society from its long-time home in Nott Hall.
The Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society’s new location was specially designed by Building Project Specialist Tyler Savage, under the direction of Dean Richard the College of Community Health Sciences.
The Center is now better integrated into the daily activities of the medical school. Its new office-mates are the Rural Health Scholars Program and the University of Alabama Wellness Clinic Two innovative features are a soundproof room for high-quality recording and work areas for undergraduate students, medical students, and graduate student interns.
The final phase of the move from Nott Hall was scheduled for early March 2020. But the Coronavirus pandemic resulted in a virtual shutting down of the university that spring. Collection Manager Kevin Bailey, coordinated the establishment of the Center’s new facility in the Northeast Medical Building, while Dr. Blum worked nights and weekends at Nott Hall to pack up the collection, and the transfer of the Center’s collection was accomplished in May.
Support & Acknowledgements
Mrs. Celia Wallace, Alan Blum MD, and the portrait of Dr. and Mrs. Gerald Leon Wallace, at Springhill Medical Center, Mobile, Alabama. Dr. Wallace, founder of the medical center, was a compassionate and innovative leader in patient care.
Rick Richards, MD and Alan Blum, MD (along with Thomas Houston, MD) are awarded the Surgeon General’s Medallion in 1987 by Dr. C. Everett Koop, for their pioneering efforts to inspire the medical profession to counter the tobacco pandemic
The University of Alabama Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society is supported by grants from Mrs. Celia Wallace and the Richards Family Foundation. Mrs. Wallace is chair of the board of directors of Springhill Memorial Hospital in Mobile, Alabama, and a leading advocate for disease prevention and community health. Lee Wallace, PhD, son of Dr. and Mrs. Gerald Wallace, is the chief executive officer of Southern Medical Health Systems, the parent company of Springhill Medical Center. Dr. Rick Richards of Augusta, Georgia, is a family physician and medical activist who has created innovative health care cost-containment programs and health-related companies.
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Eric Solberg
Special Consultant to the Center
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Judy Hamilton
Museum Collection Registrar,
Alabama Museum of Natural History
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Alan Blum, MD
Director,
Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society
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Suzanne Wolfe
Editor-in-Chief,
Alabama Heritage Magazine
5
Toby Graham
Head of Special Collections,
McCain Library & Archive, University of Southern Mississippi
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Steven Turner
Gunn Educational Resources Center,
University of Southern Mississippi
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Bethany Galbraith
Coordinator,
Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society
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Steven MacCall, PhD
School of Library & Information Studies
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Keith Jacobi
Curator of Human Osteology,
Alabama Museum of Natural History
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Benjamin Rapaport
Expert,
Antiquarian Tobacciana
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Eugene Umberger
Interim Director,
Neville Public Museum
Expert Panel Gives Advice for Initiating New UA Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society
“The National Endowment for the Humanities provided a Consultant Grant to The University of Alabama Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society. Consulting experts have met twice to advise Dr. Alan Blum and his assistant Bethany Galbraith as they plan for setting up the Center, which includes the largest collection of tobacco-related materials in the world.” From On Rounds, Spring 2001
Richard Friend, MD
Dean, College of Community Health Sciences, (CCHS)
The University of Alabama
Nelle Williams, MSLS
Director, Medical Library, CCHS
The University of Alabama
Andrea Wright, MILS
Medical Librarian, CCHS
The University of Alabama
Sam, David, Leon and Doris Blum
Leslie Zganjar, MPA
Director of Communications, CCHS
The University of Alabama
Allison Arendale, MPA, CPA
Director of Financial Affairs, CCHS
The University of Alabama
Melani Harrell
Administrative Secretary
Department of Family, Rural, and Internal Medicine, CCHS
The University of Alabama
Johnathan Bean, PhD
Professor of History
Southern Illinois University, Carbondale
Craig Remington
Cartographic Lab Supervisor
Department of Geography
The University of Alabama
Allison Leitner
Director of Advancement
The University of Alabama
Tyler Savage
Building Project Specialist, CCHS
The University of Alabama
Nathan Schachtman, Esq.
Science and Law Advisor