Developing School-Based Tobacco Use Prevention and Cessation Programs

Even though some school-based tobacco use prevention programs have proven successful, nearly all first use of tobacco occurs before high school graduation. In this volume the authors offer a health researcher′s perspective on the history, status, and requirements of school-based tobacco use prevention and cessation research. They outline how to develop a research program and give practical guidelines on how to implement it. Following a brief overview of school-based prevention and cessation programs, they describe the development and implementation of Project Towards No Tobacco Use (TNT), and address major theoretical and methodological issues. The specific issues they address include developing and selecting good programs; developing the curriculum; examining the social influences of etiology; and selecting, assigning, and teaching subjects. Researchers and practitioners in public health, especially those involved in adolescent tobacco programs and health promotion will find this volume particularly interesting.

Dr. Steve Sussman is a professor of preventive medicine and psychology at the University of Southern California. Dr. Sussman conducts research in the prediction, prevention, and cessation of tobacco and other drug abuse and in the utility of empirical program development methods. He is first author on the book Developing School-Based Tobacco Use Prevention and Cessation Programs (1995), based on his previous research in that arena. He is also the editor of Handbook of Program Development for Health Behavior Research and Practice (2001), a leading text in this arena, and he is the lead author on the upcoming text The Social Psychology of Drug Abuse (with Susan L. Ames; September, 2001). He was the principal investigator of Project Towards No Tobacco Use (Project TNT). Project TNT is a tobacco use prevention and cessation project among young teens, which is being disseminated nationally by the Centers for Disease Control as a "Program That Works" and by the Centers for Substance Abuse Prevention as a model program. It is also recognized as a model program by the Department of Education of the State of California, Sociometrics Inc, and by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Recently this project also became recognized as an exemplary program by the U.S. Department of Education. His other projects include Project EX, a successful adolescent tobacco-use cessation program which was tested through use of a large, true field experimental design, and Project Towards No Drug Abuse (Project TND), which is a drug abuse prevention project for older teens, particularly for those at risk for drug abuse. Project TND is now considered a model program by the Centers for Substance Abuse Prevention, Health Canada, Sociometrics Inc, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse. He has published over 160 articles, chapters, or books in the arena of drug use and abuse.

Alan W. Stacy is Director of the University of Southern California (USC) Transdisciplinary Drug Abuse Prevention Research Center, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. He is also Associate Professor at the USC Department of Preventive Medicine. He received his Ph.D. in social and personality psychology in 1986 from the University of California, Riverside. He did postdoctoral work at the University of Washington and at USC. Dr. Stacy has published over 80 peer-reviewed articles on addiction, focusing on cognitive models of drug use. He was one of the first investigators to apply implicit cognition approaches to the addiciton area. His research on implicit cognition was recently acknowledged in the Tenth Special Report to Congress on Alcohol and Health.