Helping children understand the risks of vaping
“There has definitely been a reduction as awareness has been raised there,” she said.
She and her colleagues have fueled this growing awareness among their students. The school held information sessions for parents and students highlighting the potential health and psychological dangers of using e-cigarettes and other tobacco products.
During one session, local law enforcement advised parents to watch for changes in attitude or mood and to look for signs of substance use in the home. People who vape may also feel more thirsty and experience more nosebleeds. Or parents may smell an odor that they are unable to identify even though they never see the easy-to-hide products that do not produce smoke like traditional cigarettes.
Meanwhile, for students caught using e-cigarettes at school, the response began to shift from punitive to supportive. While in the past a one-day suspension was common, educators are more often engaging parents and referring the student to a counselor to meet with the student and help educate parents regarding addictive products and effective strategies for help young people quit. Counselors “are part of the team approach that we have,” Michalski said.
Shenendehowa High also piloted a program in which students caught vaping read news articles and watch videos on the topic, then write a short essay regarding what they learned and how they might better handle things like peer pressure.
“The ultimate goal is to change behavior,” Michalski said. “We want to teach the student that vaping has major health effects, and that it can lead to addiction and potentially the use of other drugs in the future. »
Initiatives from all sides
Changing behaviors is also the goal of several national anti-vaping initiatives, which have so far demonstrated impact in research. These include:
- smoke screen. Developed by researchers at Yale University, smokeSCREEN is a video game that educates children regarding the dangers of e-cigarettes and other tobacco products, with the goal of helping them avoid their use altogether.
- It’s Quit. Developed by the public health nonprofit Truth Initiative, This is Quitting sends people aged 13 to 24 automated daily text messages from peers who have tried or succeeded in quitting e-cigarettes.
- Catch my breath. Developed at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center at Houston, CATCH My Breath offers both parenting education and classroom lessons that include group discussions, goal setting, and group activities. A digital portal provides schools with materials, some free and some chargeable, including teaching guides, presentations and posters designed for different age groups.
Additionally, the FDA has partnered with a publishing company to create a line of anti-vaping messaging resources for educators.
At Boston University’s AHA-funded Rapidly Advancing Discovery to Arrest the Outbreak of Youth Vaping Center, a project focuses on developing and testing a virtual reality intervention to help high school students avoid or stop vaping. The project’s lead researcher, Belinda Borrelli, and her team worked extensively with high school students to learn their perspectives on current vaping cessation programs and how to design new programs that are engaging and effective. The team is using their data to develop a cutting-edge virtual reality intervention to administer in schools.
“It’s important that the intervention doesn’t feel ‘school’ and that it also involves adolescents, regardless of their motivation to quit,” she said.
Anti-vaping efforts by parents, educators, advocates and public health officials appeared to get a boost in June, when the FDA ordered Juul Labs to stop selling and distributing its products, citing a lack of data on potential health risks. This action has been temporarily suspended administratively and before the courts.
If Juul products, popular with teens, end up being pulled from the market, that’s encouraging news, Michalski said. “If we might make e-cigarettes less accessible, I think that would help. »
Strict regulation at the federal, state and community levels is an important tool to reduce the use of all types of nicotine products, said Dr. Naomi Hamburg, senior researcher and director of the Youth Vaping Research Center of BU.
“We need to think regarding comprehensive public health strategies for regulation that will reduce the use of combustible cigarettes as the No. 1 goal and limit or stop” all use of nicotine products among young people, she said. declared.
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