State Attorney General visits Brody School of Medicine to honor physician

North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein visited the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University on Monday to present an ECU physician with an award for his efforts warning people about the dangers of e-cigarettes.

Each year, the attorney general presents Dogwood Awards to North Carolinians who are dedicated to keeping people safe, healthy and happy in their communities.

Attorney General Josh Stein presents a 2019 Dogwood Award to Dr. Mark Bowling. (Photo by Cliff Hollis)

Dr. Mark Bowling, the chief of the Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine in Brody’s Department of Internal Medicine, was one of 22 recipients in the state to earn this recognition in 2019.

“We created the Dogwood Awards to recognize North Carolinians who are making a difference in people’s lives in this state, and Dr. Bowling is a great example of that,” Stein said. “He uses his science to study illnesses and pulmonary and respiratory issues resulting from e-cigarettes. These are incredibly dangerous products, so it’s important to have experts, like Dr. Bowling, out there letting us know what the consequences are so parents can make good decisions and people like me can hold wrongdoers accountable.”

Stein personally delivered the award to Bowling on Monday after Bowling was unable to attend the awards ceremony in November.

“It’s great that I am able to do this here (at ECU),” Stein said. “People work hard for the people of this state, so it’s a treat for me to be able to recognize their hard work.”

Bowling, a 2001 Brody graduate and interventional pulmonologist for ECU Physicians and Vidant Medical Center, has been outspoken about the harmful effects of vaping and e-cigarettes for the last few years, but those efforts increased following the outbreak of vaping-related deaths last year.

“My specialty is really lung cancer and advanced diagnostic bronchoscopy, and but I’m a critical care doctor as well. So vaping kind of came into this because of its relation to smoking (tobacco) and because I’ve seen patients come into the emergency room, as well as the intensive care unit, with vaping-related issues,” Bowling said.

Because e-cigarettes are so new, researchers are still trying to determine exactly how harmful they are, Bowling said, but they have been known to cause dangerous issues such as acute respiratory stress syndrome and hypersensitivity pneumonitis.

“I think that they kind of snuck in on us and didn’t seem to be as harmful as cigarettes initially, and now I think the science is still kind of weighing that out,” he added. “These aren’t regulated, we don’t know what goes into them and I think North Carolina has been on the forefront of trying to make some laws to regulate these things.”

For now, the way to avoid the harmful health effects of smoking and vaping is simple.

“Number one, if you smoke, stop,” Bowling said. “And number two, if you vape, stop.”

Bowling said he was honored and humbled to be presented a Dogwood Award by Stein, but said he doesn’t know if he fits into category of someone who is “making a difference in people’s lives” in North Carolina.

“I think that I’m simply someone who is able to hold the award,” he said. “The award really goes to a lot of the people who are out there every day throughout North Carolina – the physicians, all the nurses, the social workers, any of the health care workers – and who make the true difference of what’s going on in North Carolina, particularly with the health of the people.”

-by Rob Spahr, University Communications