14 DAY TRIAL // Researchers in the United Kingdom are currently applying a new method of deterring students from picking up smoking, in several schools in England and Wales.
The program proved very successful in medical trials, and its aim will be cutting the rates of teenage smoking across the country, its developers say.
This is a pioneering social enterprise program, that works by identifying and training the most influential students in schools for deterring the phenomenon.
These individuals are then charged with keeping their friends and classmates away from cigarettes. A large trial that was ordered by the Medical Research Council proved the approach is successful.
“Cutting rates of teenage smoking is a public health priority,” explains University of Bristol (UB) School of Social & Community Medicine professor Rona Campbell.
“However our research has shown that teenagers respond far better to anti-smoking messages from their peers than they do from the Government, the NHS, their teachers or even their parents,” adds the expert, who is a co-founder of the program.
“Along with colleagues at Cardiff University we are developing a new social enterprise that will make this program available across the UK,” Campbell explains.
“Not only is it based upon years of research at Bristol and Cardiff, we are also helping make our discoveries a reality,” she argues.
It is estimated that the new program, which is applied by UB/UC joint spin-out initiative DECIPHer IMPACT Ltd., could cut the numbers of 14 to 15 year olds taking up smoking by over 40,000.
Other evidence-based public health interventions are also possible in the long run, believes Cardiff University professor Laurence Moore.
“Smoking is our focus at the moment, but the intention is that DECIPHer IMPACT will in the future support the implementation of other effective ways to tackle obesity, alcohol or drug abuse in school children,” Moore explains.
Details of the MRC-sponsored trial were published in a May 2008 issue of the esteemed scientific journal The Lancet.
The endeavor, called A Stop Smoking in Schools Trial (ASSIST), was carried out in western England and Wales, on students from 59 schools.