By The Hays Daily News

The Ellis County Community Partnership recently received a grant that will help the organization continue to educate the community about secondhand smoke.

The $27,687 grant was provided by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment's Office of Health Promotion.

"The main focus is that we are implementing programs to reduce secondhand smoke," said Jodi Sander, prevention specialist for ECCP. "We do education about the health consequences of, obviously, tobacco, but also spit tobacco."

Sander said the ECCP reaches out to Hays Medical Center, Ellis County Extension Office and area dental clinics to educate the community.

The ECCP has been working toward its goal of reducing people's exposure to secondhand smoke for almost six years due to the support of the grant.

Sander said she was unsure how many people were helped by the secondhand smoke programs.

"That's something we just started tracking as far as impact, so we don't have the numbers yet," Sander said.