Nancilee Burzachechi can recall the date almost immediately. More than 16 years ago, on Jan. 20, 2001, Burzachechi quit smoking, a feat she had attempted three times before. Never again would she step out into the chill of a Pennsylvania winter to satisfy her craving for nicotine.
As fate would have it, Burzachechi would later that year walk onto the Community College of Allegheny County campus to assume her first role with the school. More than a 15 years later, the college has — with Burzachechi's help — kicked smoking to the curb.
"I know what it's like,” Burzachechi says of quitting smoking. “It's one of the hardest things I've ever had to do, but the best thing I ever did.”
Nancilee Burzachechi
As CCAC's executive director of government relations and external affairs and the project director of the college's Breath Easy Smoke-Free Tobacco-Free Initiative, Burzachechi has been instrumental in spearheading a tobacco-free policy on all school grounds. This includes vaping and even smoking in vehicles in campus parking lots.
By initiating the policy, CCAC expects to reduce clean-up expenses related to tobacco products. According to the college's website, there’s also been improvement in on-the-job productivity, long-term cost savings in health care, and an overall improved professional image for the college.
As Burzachechi explains, CCAC was in 2015 selected to participate in Truth Initiative's Smoke-Free and Tobacco-Free Community College Grant Initiative. Truth Initiative, known then as American Legacy Foundation, is a non-profit tobacco-control organization that attempts to dissuade teenagers from smoking and encourages smokers to quit. The community college grants initiative is designed to help colleges create healthy, safe environments with the goal of adopting smoke- and tobacco-free campus policies.
Two years ago, Allegheny Community County was interested in applying for the $5,000 annual grant to support a "Healthier Allegheny County." After being awarded the grant for the fiscal year of April 2015 to March 2016, the college applied for and was awarded the grant a second time. On Jan. 17, 2017, the CCAC Board of Education voted in favor of banning smoking tobacco use and vaping.
"We've always been a non-smoking facility, but we provided designated smoking areas," Burzachechi says. "That was probably the biggest change for us. We were prepared for a lot of protests and just general malcontent.”
To her surprise, the policy did not receive much backlash. Burzachechi credits this to how much hard work was put into preparing students and staff for the transition through educational programs and announcements.
In order to help with reinforcement, the school also discussed incorporating a penalty for smoking on campus.
"We didn't really want to do that because we didn't want it to impact our enrollment,” she says. “We wanted to really create more of a caring culture, so rather than be holding a stick, we wanted to give people an opportunity to respect our smoke and tobacco-free policy. Rather than run out and be a militant police state, we try to approach it in a caring way.”
Citing data from the Truth Initiative, Burzachechi shared with the college Board of Trustees enrollment statistics at other major colleges that have established similar policies. Some of thsoe schools are in North Carolina, which is home to several major tobacco companies. The statistics indicated enrollment was not impacted by the initiatives.
"We wanted to make sure that it didn't turn off individuals,” she says. “In fact, we chose to view it as a plus for families. If you're a parent, you don't want your children to be exposed to secondhand smoke because it's so deadly.”
After the policy was initiated, Burzachechi says it took about four to six weeks to notice a major difference in the decrease of tobacco use; but, at the same time, many faculty and staff members were anticipating it because of how well the school publicized the information. CCAC offers several programs to help students stop smoking at no cost. Now that the change is in full-swing and continuing on the path of success, Burzachechi says it was a total team effort.
"We had such an involved advisory group, and I was so proud of our institution and the folks that I worked with on this advisory committee," she says. "Without them there would have been no way this could have happened."