FAQ: E-Cigarette Education & Curriculum / CATCH Clean 68 What is the e-cigarette curriculum about? Our aim is to inform and educate teachers, parents, and health professionals in the school/after-school setting to equip students with answers about e-cigarettes to make informed decisions about the use of e-cigarettes. The curriculum will include in-class activities, teacher education, and take-home materials for parents. The program is based on state of the art tobacco awareness and prevention best-practices and will be evaluated Spring 2016 for outcome evidence. The curriculum will consist of 6 lesson at 20-30 minutes each. Key learning objectives include: knowledge of e-cigarettes and potential harms, understanding and analyzing deceptive advertising techniques, developing and practicing socially acceptable refusal skills, and practicing peer modeling techniques in small groups. Specifically, the intended outcomes are to ensure that students will:

• Understand that E-cigarettes are addictive, unhealthy and not as popular as they think.

• Resist their own curiosity and peer pressure to experiment with E-cigaretes

• Influence friends and peers to not use E-cigarettes. Why education on e-cigarettes? E-cigarettes are increasingly popular among adolescents, and currently there is no education and prevention curriculum specifically targeted at e-cigarettes. While the purchase of e-cigarettes by minors is prohibited, the use of e-cigarettes among youth and adolescents is on the rise. This is particularly concerning as the liquid in e-cigarettes contains nicotine, and the chemicals in nicotine liquids are not currently regulated for safety standards, with unknown health effects. The toxicology of e-cigarettes is uncertain. In addition to the unknown health effects, early evidence suggests that nicotine in e-cigarettes primes the brain to desire other addictive drugs, including conventional cigarettes, which are known to cause disease and lead to premature death (National Institute on Drug Abuse, NIDA). A recent study showed that students who have used e-cigarettes by the time they start 9th grade are more likely than others to start smoking traditional cigarettes and other smokable tobacco products within the next year (Rigotti, 2015).

                       

 

How is the curriculum designed to address social and psychological factors? The curriculum is designed to address these factors by:

• Disrupting the norm held by youth that everybody (or many people) smoke E-cigarettes

• Developing skills to resist peer pressure to use E-cigarettes. • Understanding how advertising is designed to undermine credible health

information and to create favorable attitudes and beliefs about E-cigarettes.

What is the target age for curriculum? The target age is students in middle school, 10-14 years old. How does training work and who should attend training from our school or afterschool program? Training will be facilitated in a virtual setting via online video, webinar or YouTube. We expect the training session to be 30 minutes + 30 minute Q+A. The curriculum can be taught in various subjects to include: science, health, physical education and advisory. How much will the curriculum cost? The curriculum will be made available to participating pilot schools free of charge. Beginning in Fall 2016, there will be an annual subscription fee of $25 per school. Who developed the curriculum? The curriculum is developed by researchers and academics at the University of Texas School of Public Health, Michael & Susan Dell Center (MSD) for Healthy Living and certified for use by middle school teachers and tobacco educators. The MSD Center is a national Tobacco Center of Regulatory Science (TCORS) site. Is CATCH Clean 68 research based? CATCH Clean 68 is a best-practice based program that was modeled after an evidence-based program called the “Class of 1989 Study1” and also derived from elements of the Coordinated Approach to Child Health (CATCH) Program. Both the Class of 1989 and CATCH were NIH-funded research studies, and both

                                                                                                               1 The Class of 1989 Study team later published a program called the Minnesota Smoking Prevention Program which is commercially available at Hazelden.org.

                       

 

demonstrated positive and statistically reliable research results. The Class of 1989 formally studied two communities in a school-based tobacco prevention program and showed strong effects in reducing student smoking from 6th to 12th grade. CATCH studied children in 3rd to 12th grade and showed strong effects in improving student dietary intake and physical activity, and in later versions of the program, prevention of child obesity. Although not formally tested in an NIH randomized trial, CATCH Clean 68 was modified from the Class of 1989 tobacco prevention program and was designed to be added to the CATCH portfolio of school health programs. The same child health researchers that worked on Class of 1989, and CATCH, have created the CATCH Clean 68 program. 1 How is CATCH involved? CATCH will be leading the Clean 68 dissemination effort by offering curriculum materials, training and technical support. CATCH improves the health of children from pre-K through middle school, in both school and after-school settings. CATCH transforms the school environment and provides kids with the knowledge and skills to lead healthy lives, and supports schools through community engagement. How can I learn more about the curriculum and receive additional information to attend an online training/webinar? For additional information or if you are interested in being a pilot school during Spring 2016, please contact ecigs@catchglobalfoundation.org