Dispelling the Myths About Tobacco

Education and Outreach Activities

Contents • Welcome Letter • Seven Deadly Myths • Education & Outreach Activities • Help With Quitting • Making the Media Work for You • Documents Tragetting Women • More References & Resources

Entire Document in Adobe Acrobat Format (PDF - 1121K)

This section includes suggestions for activities to increase awareness, attract media coverage, and focus attention on the harm perpetrated by tobacco. You can customize these activities for your own communities and media markets. Remember that all of your interventions should be part of and consistent with your comprehensive tobacco control plan that involves ensuring clean indoor air, increasing the price of tobacco, reducing the cost of tobacco cessation treatment, and establishing counter advertising campaigns.

Community Activities

1. Community Presentations: Ask to be placed on the agendas for meetings of community organizations. Prepare to use whatever time they can give you, and tailor your presentations to each audience. Ask large employers if you or a volunteer can speak to their female employees. Ask union leaders if you may address their membership. Ask elected officials to allow you to speak at town meetings. Consider parent-teacher associations, 4-H clubs, girls clubs, sororities, and sodalities. Consider inviting peers, health care providers, or community leaders to help you present. Make special efforts to reach disparate populations, especially persons with less education and lower incomes and other groups with high rates of smoking. Even if all you do is let smokers know that their community cares about them, it may help move them along in their readiness to quit. You may also be able to provide education on the benefits of smoke-free workplaces, restaurants, and public places and on reimbursement for tobacco cessation treatment. Always circulate a sign-up sheet to collect contact information about people interested in getting involved.

2. Cessation Assistance: This presentation can increase awareness of the hazards of tobacco use and the benefits of quitting. It is also designed to increase smokers' readiness to quit. Be prepared to help smokers take the next step. Identify and locate community-based cessation resources, especially telephone quit lines. You might begin by contacting state and local health departments and state and local offices of the American Cancer Society, American Heart Association, and American Lung Association. Canvas organized health care systems, including hospitals, to see what cessation support they have available.

3. Smoke-Free Sports: CDC has developed a variety of materials to support smoke-free education and activities through organized sports. Smoke-free coach's kits, sports posters, patches, pledges, playbooks, and other support materials are all available from the CDC Web site (www.cdc.gov/tobacco/sports_initiatives_splash.htm). Implementing smoke-free sports activities is an excellent way to combine health education with healthy habits. It also enlists coaches and players as powerful health messengers for the children on sports teams and the parents who support them.

4. Smoke-Free Restaurants: Survey the restaurants in your community on their smoking policies and publish the results as a brochure and in community newspapers. Let the restaurants know you are canvassing for inclusion in a "smoke-free dining directory." Your inquiries will remind restaurateurs that the large majority of their customers do not smoke and would prefer to dine in safe and comfortable environments. Hold a media event or send out a media advisory when you release the directory. Make the directory available on the Web if you have a site. Research shows that restaurants do not lose revenue when they go smoke free; on the contrary, many increase their income by clearing the air for all customers. Reward smoke-free restaurants with awards or certificates.

5. Celebrate the Big Days: While we need to be ready for news opportunities when they arise, there are many recurring events that communities can use to promote tobacco control. For sample news releases for the following dates, log onto CDC's Web site at www.cdc.gov/tobacco.

• New Year's: One of the most common New Year's resolutions is to quit smoking. But the unpleasant symptoms of nicotine withdrawal plus greater amounts of tobacco advertising that typically appear immediately after January 1 make it hard for new ex-smokers to stay tobacco free, so support efforts during this time are especially useful. Communities can start building up to smoke-free resolutions during the slow news time right after Christmas. Try to enlist a local TV personality, sports figure, school principal, or well-known coach to discuss how she was able to quit.
  
  
• Kick Butts Day: Every year in April, the National Center for Tobacco-Free Kids celebrates Kick Butts Day (www.kickbuttsday.org*). Hundreds of events are coordinated with this day in every state and many foreign countries. Local events include mock funerals for the Marlboro Man, rallies at state capitols, and the release of tobacco advertising surveys. Support materials are available from the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids Web site (www.tobaccofreekids.org*).
  
  
• Mother's Day: Mother's Day is an excellent opportunity to focus attention on helping mothers and grandmothers quit smoking. Children provide an important reason to quit, the impetus to quit, and the support to quit.
  
  
• World No Tobacco Day: Every May 31 is celebrated worldwide as World No Tobacco Day (www.worldnotobaccoday.com*). A rich supply of support materials for community activities is made available for this event every year from a variety of sources, including CDC (www.cdc.gov/tobacco), Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids (www.tobaccofreekids.org*), and the Pan American Health Organization (www.paho.org*). This is an excellent opportunity for communities to join the worldwide tobacco control movement and partner with faraway places that face the same problems.
  
  
• Juneteenth: Juneteenth, which celebrates African American freedom, can also be used to promote freedom from nicotine addiction. Available materials to focus the media spotlight on this population include the 1998 Surgeon General's Report, Tobacco Use Among U.S. Racial/Ethnic Minority Groups. This and other reports that localize the toll taken by tobacco are available from the CDC Web site (www.cdc.gov/tobacco).
  
  
• The Great American Smokeout: The American Cancer Society's Great American Smokeout (www.quitsmoking.com/KopyKit/reports/smokeout.htm*) is celebrated on the third Thursday of November every year. The Great American Smokeout (GASO) is a great time for businesses, restaurants, and even entire communities to go smoke free if only for a day! The "hard news" slowdown that begins around this time leaves media outlets with more time and space to focus on "soft news" issues, including lifestyle stories about ex-smokers. Find a community leader who quit on the first GASO or the most recent GASO, and broadcast the person's success through the media.

6. Local Spokespersons: Create a list of experts on the issues of women and smoking who are ready to serve as local spokespersons on very short notice or for public presentations. This allows you and your media specialists to take advantage of late-breaking news, including short-lived national stories that can be kept alive through a "local angle." CDC's State Tobacco Activities Tracking and Evaluation (STATE) system is a good source of state-specific data on tobacco use, tobacco control laws, the health impact and costs associated with tobacco use, tobacco agriculture and manufacturing, and investments in tobacco control. To access the STATE system and other sources of state and local tobacco control data, visit www.cdc.gov/tobacco and click on "state information."

7. Editorial Board Meetings: Form a small expert team to meet with the editorial board of your local newspapers. Explain the issues of women and tobacco to them. Prepare a leave-behind packet with the best and hardest-hitting information, including graphs and charts, relevant internal industry documents, and local contacts. Many of these items can be found in this toolkit. Focus your efforts on getting the paper to print an editorial e.g., on ensuring clean indoor air in municipal buildings or on creating smoke-free day-care centers. Even if the paper does not print such a favorable editorial, the editors will have the subject of tobacco in mind. They may call you when they need more information or be more open to printing letters to the editor on this topic.

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School Activities

Research has shown that well-designed, well-implemented, and comprehensive school programs to prevent tobacco use and addiction

• Have proved effective in preventing tobacco use.
• Provide prevention education during the years when the risk of becoming addicted to tobacco is greatest.
• Provide a tobacco-free environment that establishes nonuse of tobacco as a norm and offers opportunities for positive role modeling.
• Can help prevent the use of other drugs, especially if the program addresses the use of these substances.

Based on this body of research, CDC's Guidelines for School Health Programs to Prevent Tobacco Use and Addiction recommends that schools

1. Develop and enforce a smoke-free school policy on tobacco use.
2. Provide instruction about the short- and long-term effects of tobacco use, social influences on tobacco use, peer norms regarding tobacco use, and refusal skills.
3. Provide tobacco-use prevention education in kindergarten through 12th grade, with especially intensive instruction in junior high or middle school.
4. Provide program-specific training for teachers.
5. Involve parents and families in supporting school-based programs to prevent tobacco use.
6. Assess the tobacco-use prevention program at regular intervals.
7. Support cessation efforts among students and school staff who use tobacco.

Here are some practical ideas for activities that teachers and youth group leaders can use to supplement CDC's overall guidelines:

1. Reviewing Magazines: Have students review copies of popular female-targeted magazines and count and tabulate the number of tobacco ads and anti-tobacco ads. Students can then write up the results of their research in a news release for distribution to the media or school newspaper. They can also send the results to magazine editors, asking for the elimination of such targeted tobacco advertising.

2. Researching Tobacco Industry Documents: Through the development of research skills, students can learn about the formerly secret, internal tobacco industry documents that have been made available after settlements of large lawsuits brought against tobacco companies. The documents comprise the paper trail of the tobacco industry's 40-year effort to hide the truth about the health hazards and addictiveness of tobacco, and their incredibly successful marketing efforts that have helped create the current epidemic of tobacco-related disease among women. Students can devise search strategies to locate documents relevant to their own state or community to uncover industry plans for targeting vulnerable populations, including women and girls, and to show the industry's subversion of its own scientific studies. Because these documents are often so shocking and surprising, they are valuable as news "hooks" or "pegs" for investigative journalists and TV reporters.

3. Developing Media Literacy: Media literacy refers to the ability to deconstruct and understand the real purpose and messages behind slick productions. Media literacy courses in junior high and high schools have been especially effective in helping young people critically analyze how the media normalize and glamorize unhealthy lifestyles and behaviors, including the use of tobacco and alcohol. Media Sharp, a modular media literacy training kit, and SmokeScreeners, which focuses on smoking in the movies, are available at no charge from the CDC Web site (www.cdc.gov/tobacco).

4. Other Activities: Additional activity ideas, school curricula, Guidelines for School Health Programs to Prevent Tobacco Use and Addiction, and other resources are available from CDC's Division of Adolescent and School Health (DASH) at www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dash. Materials, ideas, and other resources for school activities are also available from the National Center for Tobacco-Free Kids (www.tobaccofreekids.org*) and the American Legacy Foundation (www.americanlegacy.org*).

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College Campus Activities

1. Promote Smoke-Free Campus Policies: College campuses are institutions of higher learning and residences for young adults, many of whom are away from home for the first time. Students and faculty can work through the governing bodies of their universities to maintain a clean and healthy environment with clean air policies, including adequate signage and enforcement. Increasingly, smoke-free policies are becoming the norm, not the exception, at colleges and universities. For example, in spring 2001, Purdue University became the eighth of the Big Ten universities to forbid smoking in dormitories. Begin by surveying students. Ask if they know what secondhand smoke is and if they want to be protected from it. (Even many smokers don't want to breathe others' secondhand smoke.) Include questions about the need for services to help smokers quit. Increase awareness and solicit support through the college newspaper or local media. If a decision is made to implement smoke-free policies gradually, begin with public places such as libraries, eating areas, and classroom buildings, and continue to build support. Enlist the aid of resident assistants in the dormitories. For maximum protection, all indoor areas (including residence halls and sports arenas) should be smoke free. Sample policies are available on the CDC Web site at www.cdc.gov/tobacco.

2. Make Presentations to Peers: Students can use the Women and Tobacco: Seven Deadly Myths video and discussion guide to make presentations to groups such as campus clubs, student organizations, sororities, campus governing bodies, and health-related classes. Use the posttest questionnaire to assess the students' understanding of the video.

3. Involve Campus Health Care Centers: Encourage the student health care system to offer cessation counseling and other services. Work with health care centers to ensure that tobacco cessation treatments approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are available at a low cost or free of charge. Publicize the availability of these treatments, services, and other resources.

4. Remove Tobacco Products From Campus: When approached directly, bookstore managers might agree to remove tobacco products, but if not, students have other avenues for pursuing this goal. Petitions could be circulated for signatures. Articles and letters to the editor could be placed in the campus newspaper. Remind campus merchants that tobacco sales are inconsistent with drug-free zones.

5. Use Virginia SLAM!: New York singer-songwriter Leslie Nuchow's talent attracted the marketers of Virginia Slims cigarettes, who tried to purchase her reach and effectiveness with money and offers of fame. Tempted as most of us would be, Leslie maintained her moral compass and instead dedicated herself and her talents to helping young people become and stay tobacco free by creating her own record label Virginia SLAM! Leslie's musical talent draws young people to her tobacco-free message, which is strong, personal, convincing, and effective. Schools, campuses, clubs, and community groups can book Leslie for concerts at a relatively small cost. For more information, log on to the CDC Web site at www.cdc.gov/tobacco. Also available from the CDC Web site is a 15-minute video entitled SLAM! that describes Leslie's refusal to have her music associated with cigarette marketing (www.cdc.gov/tobacco/slam.htm).

For additional activities, information, sample policies, case studies, and other resources, visit www.bacchusgamma.org* or call (303)871-0901.

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Health Care Provider and Insurer Activities

1. Health Care Providers: Doctors, dentists, nurses, physician assistants, midwives, and nurse practitioners are powerful messengers for becoming and staying smoke free because they

• Have a very personal relationship with their patients.
• See them fairly regularly.
• Are trusted and respected.
• Communicate with smokers in a context where health is the central issue.

Work with health professionals directly and through their professional associations to deliver the smoke-free message. Provide patient chart stickers that ask about tobacco use, preprinted "prescription" pads for smoking cessation, and lists of cessation resources. Order and distribute copies of the Public Health Service guideline "Treating Tobacco Use and Dependence: A Clinical Practice Guideline" and the consumer guide "You Can Quit Smoking" from www.cdc.gov/tobacco. (Click on "how to quit," then click on "treating tobacco use. . .")

Pregnant women are especially motivated to quit smoking for the health of their babies, and many of them do. Unfortunately, only about one-third of new mothers who quit during pregnancy are still smoke-free 1 year later. Focus your efforts on the health providers who care for women during and after pregnancy (e.g., family practitioners, obstetricians, internists) and those who care for children (e.g., family practitioners, pediatricians). The need to protect the air of infants and children is important to communicate to parents.

• Work with local and statewide medical societies.
• Include smoke-free messages in birthing and Lamaze classes.
• Offer referral sources for cessation programs.
• Place take-home cessation brochures in providers' offices.
• Educate providers and their patients about the dangers of secondhand smoke, especially the harm it causes infants and children. Emphasize the need for remaining smoke free.
• Work with local Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) programs to deliver and reinforce the smoke-free message, especially around small children.
• Distribute copies of the video Women and Tobacco: Seven Deadly Myths for airing in medical office waiting rooms.

2. Health Care Systems: Organized health care systems have financial incentives to invest in prevention services, and smoking cessation is one of the most cost effective. Meet with the managers of your HMOs, PPOs, and employer-sponsored health care systems. Work with them to ensure that plan members are reimbursed for cessation services and products. For additional resources to encourage health plan coverage for cessation services, see www.endsmoking.org.

3. Employers and Insurers. Work with your local employers to develop smoke-free workplace policies and coverage of cessation services. Employers whose health benefits currently cover nearly two-thirds of Americans and who have a stake in keeping employees healthy and on the job are a driving force in determining the benefits that competing health insurers offer. The CDC publication Making Your Workplace Smoke-free: A Decision Maker's Guide (www.cdc.gov/tobacco, click on "educational materials") offers practical and proven strategies for implementing successful policies. The article featured in The New England Journal of Medicine on September 3, 1998, entitled, "Use and Cost Effectiveness of Smoking-Cessation Services Under Four Insurance Plans in a Health Maintenance Organization," by Susan J. Curry et al., supports providing coverage for tobacco dependence treatment.

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This page last reviewed October 13, 2004

United States Department of Health and Human Services
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion
Office on Smoking and Health