Author: Sharayha Clingenpeel
Planning Unit: Daviess County CES
Major Program: Substance Use and Mental Health – 4-H Youth Development
Plan of Work: Healthy Lifestyles
Outcome: Initial Outcome
After a meeting with the new Youth Service Center Coordinator at a local middle school, several programs were listed to be of interest to bring into the school. With more discussion, vaping moved its way to the top of the list as being a major problem within the school which needed to be addressed. According to the 2019 study done by the National Institute on Health (NIH), “17.6% of eighth grades have vaped in the past year.” The American Lung Association put out this information: “E-cigarettes are the most commonly used tobacco product among teens ages 12-18.” Most youth and adults do not know what is inside the vapes and e-cigarettes they are using. There has been a huge increase in the number of students caught with vapes in school. The Daviess County 4-H Agent and Extension Program Assistant taught 22 classes in a 10-week time period to 7th and 8th graders at one of the local middle schools.
While going through the evaluations, students gave us some valuable suggestions on how to improve upon the program. The biggest suggestion was to incorporate the newer vapes. There are reusable and disposable vapes. Most of what the students see are the disposable vapes. With help from the local School Resource Officer, we were able to get a picture to show and teach more current information.
After the presentation, 70% of youth were able to identify the different types of vapes and 90% of youth were able to name some of the side effects of vaping.
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