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The use of tobacco, and now e-cigarettes, by youth in California continues to be a critical public health problem, which disproportionately affects low-income, racial and ethnic minority youth. Over the past decade, California youth from racial/ethnic minority groups have not experienced the same decreases in smoking as White youth and have higher rates of e-cigarette and hookah use. Innovative e-cigarette/tobacco prevention programs are needed that reach low income ethnically-diverse youth in middle school. The afterschool setting has emerged as a potential, yet relatively untouched venue to engage students in e-cigarette/tobacco use prevention, because youth from low income, racial/ethnic minority communities participate in afterschool programming. An effective afterschool tobacco use prevention program can be integrated into the current approach of afterschool programming that combines activity-based learning with health promotion content. We propose to refine our adapted version of Project TNT, a successful tobacco use prevention program used in middle school classroom environments, for the afterschool setting and assess the program’s preliminary effectiveness. We call our adapted program – Project Towards No Nicotine or Project TNN. To address the need for afterschool tobacco use prevention programming in middle school settings and guided by the principles of community-based participatory research, Breathe Los Angeles, the Boys and Girls Clubs of Carson (BGCC), USC, and UCLA, have partnered to: 1) refine Project TNN for a population of low income racial/ethnic minority middle school youth; and 2) conduct a thorough assessment of the program in South Los Angeles, a region of Los Angeles with a large number of African American and Latino families. Our research team will draw upon our experience with tobacco use prevention, delivery of health promotion programming to underserved youth in school settings, and feedback from a Community Advisory Board and youth advisors to further refine Project TNN. Our innovative adaptation of Project TNT into Project TNN uses activity-based learning to help youth resist e-cigarette and tobacco use, increase knowledge about the health consequences of their use, and promote anti-tobacco advocacy. We will include new information about other forms of tobacco products used by youth, including cigarillos and hookah, and will integrate new forms of social media into the anti-tobacco advocacy activities. Project TNN will be tested in the afterschool program of two middle schools in South Los Angeles that are administered by the BGCC. We will assess whether the program is feasible for delivery in these afterschool settings and whether it has an impact on participants’ tobacco-related knowledge and awareness, intention to use e-cigarettes and tobacco, and experimental e-cigarette and tobacco use. Through this High Impact Research Project, we will take the next steps to build off of our prior TRDRP-funded work and develop a long term program of research that will adapt and evaluate an innovative youth e-cigarette and tobacco use prevention program for delivery in afterschool settings; a unique, promising, untested tobacco use prevention opportunity with potential for widespread dissemination and considerable impact. |
