AUSTIN, Sept 27 — Anti-smoking campaigns in schools are crucial. Researchers at the University of Texas have an innovative new strategy presented not by adults but by middle- and high-schoolers.
As described in The American Journal of Preventive Medicine, the experiment brought volunteer students together to make presentations in more than 100 classrooms. Called “Teens Against Tobacco Use,” the programme was created by the American Lung Association, the American Cancer Society, and the American Heart Association.
For the project, middle- and high-schoolers were trained to present anti-tobacco campaigns to students in nine middle schools in central El Paso, Texas. In all, 2,257 students participated in the study.
Several of the presentations prepared by the trained students were directly drawn from their own experiences. One of them, for example, described how the fact that his mother smoked during her pregnancy had stunted his growth.
After telling their stories, the volunteer students were successful in getting many in the classrooms to talk about smoking in their families. Some talked about family members who had chronic illnesses or had died because of the habit.
Risk of tobacco use reduced by 37pc thanks to the student presentations
Susceptibility to tobacco use was evaluated via a short poll taken among students and control group classes in 2014 and 2015, after the class presentations had taken place. Finished in 2019, the analyses compared the responses of students who received the presentations with those from students who had not.
The results indicated that the students who had received the prevention messages were less susceptible to tobacco use (12 per cent) than those in the classes who had not (17 per cent), which according to the researchers represented a reduction in risk of 37 per cent.
The students who had volunteered for the programme also drafted a letter to the City Council of El Paso to call for new clean-air ordinances.
“Their message was very persuasive, in part because of their passion, but also because adults are supposed to protect the health of our youth,” said Louis Brown, PhD, assistant professor of health promotion and behavioural sciences at UTHealth School of Public Health and the study's lead author. The city council passed the ordinance the students supported.
The researchers specified that more lengthy studies are necessary, however, to determine if presentations by teens to prevent tobacco use can have a lasting impact on tobacco use. — AFP-Relaxnews
