Interrupting Smoking: Reaching College Students through Online Orientation Processes

Audience: This presentation is pertinent to public health, information technology, and higher education professionals interested in preventing and reducing tobacco use among college students. Key Points: Opportunities for tobacco prevention programming arise in unexpected settings. University staff who participated in a 2-year leadership development program are using a semester-long group project assignment in year 2 to develop a brief tobacco prevention and awareness module (TobaccoEdu) designed to be incorporated into online student orientation processes for freshmen. The 20-minute e-course is designed to increase students’ knowledge of the dangers of tobacco use, enhance awareness of the addictive nature of tobacco, and expose them to the tactics the tobacco industry uses to recruit new smokers. TobaccoEdu will also direct participants to available cessation services. While the tobacco industry’s focus on young adults has been well documented, students may not fully appreciate the extent to which the industry considers young adults critical to market and sales expansions, nor how the industry targets them during transitional life stages. Educational Experience: Development procedures and course content will be conveyed graphically and through discussion. Benefits: Tobacco prevention education is largely focused on elementary through high school aged students. College students receive little to no tobacco prevention education, yet social smoking is a common pattern among young adults. While smoking often begins during early teen years, many young adults begin smoking in college. Risk factors associated with the uptake of smoking among young adults include living in areas that permit indoor smoking in bars and restaurants.