Global Health Project to Pilot a Tobacco Control Intervention for Youth

(March, 2003) Research has taught us some valuable lessons about preventing the use of tobacco. One is that if people don’t start smoking before the age of 20, they are much less likely to start. Another is that it is easier to engage young people as anti-smoking advocates than it is to deter them from smoking by focusing on long-term dangers. Yet another is that skills-based learning is one of the best methods for fostering healthy behaviors over the lifespan. A new curriculum developed by HHD on behalf of the World Health Organization (WHO) seeks to apply these lessons globally to prevent one of the single biggest causes of

death in the world.


Working with WHO, a group of HHD curriculum developers have created the new Model School Health Tobacco Control Intervention, a unique curriculum that can be used in

classrooms worldwide. The intervention is ready to be pilot-tested, and several lessons are included here for feedback from educators.

The cornerstone of the curriculum is the belief that youth involvement is critical not only to prevent young people from starting to smoke but also to involve them as advocates in their neighborhoods, villages, and countries. Young people are heavily targeted by tobacco company advertising, which needs a steady stream of new smokers to keep the multi-billion dollar industry alive. Yet, tobacco-related death is among the most preventable of health problems—if we can keep young people from starting to smoke in the first place.

“There are parallels between local and global tobacco control,” says Wendy Santis, curriculum developer and senior research associate for HHD’s Global Programs. “If young people can recognize the dangers of tobacco promotion in their own neighborhoods, they will hopefully be inspired to advocate on a much larger scale.”

The lessons in the curriculum are grounded in years of research on the importance of using an environmental approach to promote health. They are based on a methodology that has been tested and used successfully by HHD’s Teenage Health Teaching Modules and other school-health interventions that focus on building life skills in young people. Six lessons include advocacy exercises focused on critical thinking, persuasion, communication, action planning, leadership, media literacy, data analysis, and policy development.

The activities depart from the traditional approach of simply educating students not to use tobacco, which is often an ineffective strategy. “ When people think of smoking prevention efforts, they expect scare tactics, says Scott Pulizzi, deputy director of HHD’s Global Programs. Most people expect the black lung speech, but this curriculum has a different set of objectives. It focuses on what young people can do to create environments free of tobacco use, and teaches them about the tobacco companies’ efforts to manipulate them to make them addicted to tobacco.”

Global Programs will next work with teachers to pilot-test the curriculum in classrooms. They also plan to present the model at several international public health conferences. For more information about the intervention, contact Wendy Santis at wsantis@edc.org.