Professors use Texas Tobacco Lawsuit Settlement grant to design smoking prevention CD

Nearly 20 percent of American teen-agers smoke cigarettes, but it's young teens and preteens who have the highest rate of initiating daily smoking, according to the American Lung Association.

The organization reports that 57 percent of high school seniors who smoke at least one pack a day began to smoke daily in middle school or junior high school.

Three UNT faculty members are developing a multimedia CD-ROM designed to prevent students in grades 6-9 from starting smoking and to help students who have already started smoking to quit.

Celia Williamson, associate professor and chair of the Department of Rehabilitation Studies, Social Work and Addictions; Michael Gibson, assistant professor of visual arts; and Dr. Donald Louis, project director for the Department of Rehabilitation Studies, Social Work and Addictions, received $355,573 from the Nursing, Allied Health, and Other Health-Related Education Grant Program to support their project. Nine such grants were awarded.

This program, administered by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, was established by the Texas Legislature with proceeds from the 1998 Texas Tobacco Lawsuit Settlement. In 1996, Texas Attorney General Dan Morales sued eight tobacco companies and three trade groups to try to cover the costs of treating patients with smoking-related illnesses. The defendants agreed to pay the state a record $17.3 billion.

Middle school and junior high school teachers will help to create the CD-ROM by providing input on which messages are effective with their students. The teachers will be brought to campus for focus groups beginning this spring.

Williamson says the CD-ROM will be created for students from different cultures and include interviews with students, teachers, medical professionals and mentors to students. It will have different grade-level components, she says.

"Our goal is to have it taught over four years, beginning in sixth grade, as part of health class curricula," she says.

The CD-ROM will have an accompanying resource manual with teaching materials and handouts designed to meet the Texas Knowledge and Skills components for middle and junior high school health classes, Williamson says.

The researchers will complete a beta version of the CD-ROM by the end of this year. The teachers will be brought back to UNT to give their opinions about it. The beta version will also be tested in some local schools.

The final CD-ROM and curriculum manual will be finished by fall 2001. Free copies will be placed in every middle and junior high school in Texas.

Williamson, Gibson and Louis say the tobacco industry's focus on children and teen-agers through advertising led them to create a smoking prevention CD-ROM.

"The advertisers show smoking as a path to adulthood, power and independence," Williamson says. "But research shows that smoking actually takes away your freedom."

In addition to having to schedule everything around times for cigarettes, "if you're a teen-ager earning $5.50 an hour at a part-time job, you're roughly spending two-thirds of that on a pack of cigarettes," Gibson says.

"You don't have the freedom to spend your money on lots of better things," he says.

Smokers also become linked to a group that is increasingly portrayed negatively in society, "and that takes away power," Gibson says.

A former advertising professional, Gibson says the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board wondered why he wanted to be involved in creating a smoking prevention CD-ROM. He points to Joe Camel, Camel cigarettes' cartoon mascot.

According to the American Lung Association, Camel's share of the youth cigarette market has risen from 0.5 percent to 32.8 percent since the cartoon campaign began. About 30 percent of 3-year-olds and 90 percent of 6-year-olds associate Joe with Camel cigarettes - the same percentages of children who associate Mickey Mouse with the Disney Channel.

"We advertisers brought you Joe Camel, which resulted in a public health disaster. Now it's up to us to take him away," Gibson says. "I also wanted to be involved in the design for something besides product selling."

Gibson says some past advertising campaigns, such as the "Just Say No" campaign against drugs in the 1980s, proved to be less effective with sixth- through ninth-graders than younger age groups.

"Peer pressure is a very hard thing for these students to overcome," he says. "It may be very easy for them to say 'no' on Monday, but not so easy on Tuesday or Wednesday, depending on which group of friends they're with."

Gibson says a CD-ROM is a more effective way to deliver anti-smoking messages than a textbook.

"By the time this CD reaches the schools, even the ninth-graders will have grown up using interactive technology," he says. "CDs that work well are enthralling and exciting to students. We want to design ours so that it won't bore students and looks cool, but also delivers the message."

BY NANCY KOLSTI nkolsti@unt.edu

Other featured articles in this issue:

• UNT celebrates
• State senator to address graduates
• New design makes debut
• Employees recognized for generosity
• Nelson Hartman appointed
• Art professor earns fellowship at Yale Center
• Program encourages high school athletes
• UNT again named 'Best College Buy'
• Professor Ana Cleveland honored
• Faculty Senate sets meeting
• Fashion design students to show creations