The North Carolina Youth Tobacco Survey administered in 1999 with over 12,000 students from grades 6-12 revealed that 18.4% of North Carolina middle school students and 38.3% of high school students are current users of a tobacco product. Locally we conducted a small survey which alarmingly showed that 72% of the students surveyed had used a tobacco product at least once in their lifetime. These studies have provided important baseline data for developing and evaluating youth tobacco prevention programs. The Surry County Health and Nutrition Center has developed an innovative approach to youth tobacco control activities at a local middle school. The learning activities are incorportated into existing curricula and focus on peer pressure, refusal skills, decision making skills. A trained health educator teaches the youth about the dangers of tobacco through an entertaining and interactive cartoon series called "The FLEX files". This comic book, developed within our local agency, is a story about a teenage boy who begins smoking cigarettes because of peer pressure. This results in a downward spiral in all facets of his life until he is confronted with his own mortality and has to make a choice. The evaluation of this four week anti-tobacco campaign will consist of a pre/post test for the pilot school and a control school. The pre-test and class activities will be administered before summer break. The post-test will be given after summer break to see if they reduced experimentation and/or initiation rates during the summer months.
Learning Objectives: By the end of this session, the participants will be able to: 1) Recognize the importance of implementing age-appropriate anti-tobacco messages. 2) Identify strategies for incorporating tobacco education messages into existing curricula.
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: Surry County Health and Nutrition Center
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.