Mobilizing Tomorrow's Leaders for a Smoke-Free Missouri

Missouri Foundation for Health

The project's overall goal is to prevent youth from using tobacco and reduce exposure to smoking in workplaces by having students, teachers, parents and community leaders work together against these problems. Although our project is a comprehensive integrated approach, it is most easily discussed in terms of the two MFH goals as two separate initiatives.

Initiative 1: Campus-Community Alliances Ready for a Smoke-Free Missouri.

Initiative 1 Aims: This initiative will develop a sustainable campus-community alliance functioning that:

1. provides tobacco control leadership training to university students;
2. addresses campus-community implementation of tobacco control initiatives and workplace smoking bans; and
3. promotes smoking cessation in all communities.

Initiative 1 Objectives:

1. Decrease the percentage of adults who work indoors and are exposed to tobacco smoke in their work area from 17.7% to 8% prior to 2009;
2. Increase the percentage of current adult smokers who use some form of medication to help them stop smoking for one day or longer during the past 12 months from 8.4% to 14% prior to 2009;
3. Increase the percentage of current adult smokers who seek assistance for quitting through classes or counseling from 2.8% to 10% prior to 2009.
4. Increase the percentage of adult smokers who quit for one day or longer during the past 12 months from 50% to 66% prior to 2009; and
5. Increase the percentage of adult smokers who are planning to stop smoking within the next 30 days from 26.1% to 35% prior to 2009.

Initiative 1 Background: Legislators authorized laws mandating clean indoor air primarily to protect citizens from the known negative health effects of second-hand smoke. Unfortunately, hospitality industry employees remain at risk for these significant negative health effects because many ordinances exempt restaurants and bars. Indeed, studies have found waitresses and bartenders have high rates of cancer, heart disease, and respiratory problems. However, a recent trend of banning smoking in restaurants and/or bars playing out in cities, states and even entire countries.

Initiative 2: School-Home-Community Leadership Development for a Smoke-Free Missouri. The goal of this initiative is to institutionalize a comprehensive interdisciplinary tobacco use prevention program that includes strong media literacy and public advocacy components which leverage 6th - 10th grade youth as community resources to prevent tobacco use in youth and reduce exposure to smoking. Our project design includes all CDC recommended tobacco use prevention program components and will facilitate schools meeting state and national health education mandates by harnessing well established delivery infrastructures. The proposed project represents a collaboration of our MU team and three well established K-12 service delivery organizations, Characterplus, Kids Voting Missouri, and Project Citizen.

Initiative 2 Objectives:

1. Decrease the proportion of students in grades 9-12 who first smoked before the age of 13 from 22.7% to 18% by 2009;
2. Decrease the proportion% of students in grades 9-12 who smoked on one or more of the previous 30 days from 30.3% to 22%;
3. Increase the proportion of secondary schools that teach students how to influence or support others to prevent tobacco use from 89% to 95%;
4. Increase the proportion of students in grades 6-12 who report participating in community activities to discourage peers from using tobacco products from 17.5% to 30%.
5. Increase the proportion of secondary schools that prohibit tobacco advertising in buildings, on grounds, on buses, in school publications or through sponsorship of school events from 91% to 95%.

Initiative 2 Background: Tobacco industry marketing increases the number of children who try smoking, and eventually becoming regular smokers. This marketing targets youth by normalizing and glamorizing tobacco use through popular entertainment, including television, movies, and magazines. Although many factors contribute to teen tobacco use, scientists agree that media representations of tobacco influence children. Media literacy is the ability to access, analyze, and critically evaluate media representations of products or issues. The representations come in a variety of forms, including magazines, radio, television, movies, videos, billboards, recorded music, video games, and the Internet. Mounting evidence suggests that media literacy training develops a key skill to help children self-regulate and help them make decisions that lead to healthy choices. Current media literacy approaches stress empowerment --- emphasizing critical thinking and communication skills that enables a person to understand the political, social, and economic implications of media messages. The Centers of Disease Control names media literacy as a "Best Practice" and includes it as an integral part of comprehensive school-based tobacco prevention programs. Media literacy training, as a part of comprehensive tobacco prevention programs, has proven to be an active and efficacious component of tobacco control that not only changes attitudes and perceptions about smoking for all students, but also leads to quit attempts and reduced smoking by teens who were smokers. Media literacy training fits into an important behavior change theoretical model ---the social influence model--- which guides a vast array of health promotion and education interventions.

For more information, contact:
Kevin D. Everett, PhD

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