Courtesy of Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center Cancer Talk

While she herself does not smoke, tobacco plays a big role in Sarah Pearson-Collins’ life. No one in her home smoked when she was growing up, but tobacco was a looming presence in her family history. Pearson-Collins, Director of Training, Development, and Support for Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center Cessation Services, helps train people to counsel individuals who want to quit smoking.

From the very beginning, coming from Africa, Black people were working on tobacco plantations, planting it, picking it, and smoking it. Pearson-Collins’ great-grandmother was born enslaved on a tobacco plantation, and 7 of her 10 children were smokers. Her elderly aunt, who suffers from COPD and uses an oxygen tank, continues to smoke. She says, “You can see the generational reach that still affects my family. In the 80s and 90s, I saw my uncles and aunts getting sick with rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory autoimmune disorders that people don’t realize are connected to smoking.”

Tobacco has been aggressively marketed to Black communities for generations, Pearson-Collins says. Even smoke-less and smoke-free products — from tobacco pouches to vape pens and e-cigarettes, still promote menthol and other flavored products to entice younger users to continue the pattern. More recently, tobacco companies have been pressured to reduce their marketing efforts around mentholated products, especially in the Black community. Still, tobacco companies often use their advertising dollars to target the Black community by providing generous donations to organizations like the NAACP, sororities, fraternities, and other groups. They also place full-page ads in publications like Jet and Ebony magazines that market a glamorous, successful, luxurious lifestyle to young Black people.

Pearson-Collins’ goal is to help change this for those who have similar family histories to her own. As a smoking cessation trainer, she helps inform and prepare tobacco specialists who work with people who want to quit smoking, helping them understand it’s not just as simple as putting down the cigarettes, or picking up a nicotine patch or nicotine gum to change their routine. She says, “By combining smoking cessation aids with counseling, it doubles your chances of quitting. As with any behavior you want to change, there’s a cognizant behavioral approach to take. Everything we do is evidence-based or best practices.”

In a community where therapy and counseling are not common or comfortable, reaching out for help can be a difficult hurdle to clear. Pearson-Collins points out that, “In the Black community, you hear ‘Give it to God.’ That’s fine, but there’s also help. Just like if you have cancer, you’re going to go to a doctor that specializes in it. Prayer is powerful, yes, but God works through the doctors and the scientists who create these medications and these new technologies.”

Roswell Park’s research confirms that lung cancer is the third most common type of cancer in the Black community in Western New York, where 7,537 cases of lung cancer were diagnosed between 2016 and 2020. Lung cancer is also the leading cause of cancer-related death in the U.S. To learn more, visit www.roswellpark.org/cancer/lung/prevention-screening/lung-cancer-screening-program and https://forms.roswellpark.org/highrisk-lung.