Accelerating a national movement for tobacco-free colleges and universities

Audience: Health departments, campus administrators, members of college or university communities.

Key Points: We provide an interactive session geared toward helping county, state, and campus advocates advance 100% tobacco-free policies on college and university campuses.  Our session is based upon five years working with North Carolina’s successful Tobacco-Free Colleges Initiative.  Forty-six colleges and universities across North Carolina have voluntarily adopted 100% smoke-free policies.  We focus on the power of leveraging environmental issues, green building certification, and cost savings messages with campus coalitions based on recent work showing the effectiveness of tobacco-free policies in reducing cigarette litter on campus.  We present findings from an assessment of the association of policy strength with reduced cigarette litter within 15 feet of main building entrances (n=67) on 19 campuses, cleaning up cigarette litter at two points in time (3,427 butts).  We illustrate how to use such findings to drive policy change using coalitions, media advocacy, and leveraging connections with student affairs professionals.

Educational Experience: Participants join interactive small groups, by college/university campus policy type, to discuss, apply, and problem-solve campus policy adoption challenges.  This interactivity will amplify the lessons learned from the NC Tobacco-Free Colleges Initiative, leveraging the results of this cigarette litter study.  Participants will leave with strategies for promoting campus tobacco-free policy adoption.  

Benefits: This presentation links policy adoption and evidence of policy effectiveness with on-the-ground experience on college and university policy adoption.  Information for policy adoption messaging and applicable to environmental concerns of cigarette litter and cleanup costs will be presented.