Teen Tobacco Use Prevention Project

Inspired by the success of the Northeastern Partnership’s Touch No Tobacco (TNT) Teen Tobacco Initiative prevention project, the South Central Partnership partnered with the NC Institute for Public Health to develop a regional approach to tobacco use and prevention in its region.  In order to do this, project coordinator, Jennifer Ersek, was hired to identify the current gaps and needs in the region, locate potential and existing resources within schools and communities to address youth tobacco use, determine best practices used in youth tobacco prevention control, locate additional funding sources, recommend next steps, and present this to the partnership.  The report written by Jennifer is provided below.

To complement this initiative, the partnership established the South Central Youth Tobacco Prevention Task force and charged it with meeting to determine barriers to youth tobacco prevention and cessation programs. 

 

Back to partnership page

Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiative

Though data and experience shows that the South Central region of has a rate of teen pregnancy higher than the state average, little is known about the true scope and scale of this problem. Graduate Research Assistant, Abigail Haydon, was brought on board to interview staff to gain insight on the scope of the problem, assess resources that are available for programmatic efforts, and obtain information about anticipated opportunities and barriers related to a regional approach for addressing issues of adolescent pregnancy, in addition to conducting telephone interviews with other community agency representatives and community stakeholders.  The report is provided below. The South Central Partnership is currently working to plan next steps for implementation and funding.

 

Back to partnership page

 

Teen Health Initiative Established to Combine Efforts from Teen Pregnancy and Tobacco Use Cessation Initiatives

Based on report recommendations provided by both the Teen Pregnancy Prevention and Tobacco Use Cessation Initiatives, a joint tobacco and teen pregnancy prevention initiative was established to address the partnership’s priority on youth issues from the perspective of a “teen health” program, thus diffusing some of the potential controversy surrounding tobacco and teen pregnancy issues.  Activities recommended for this initiative were to host a youth forum, use peer-based tobacco prevention as the service learning component of a teen pregnancy prevention program, create an after school youth club, and sponsor teen pregnancy and teen tobacco prevention trainings.  A detailed recommendation report is provided below.  Since these recommendations were provided, two Youth Forums were held, one in Montgomery county and one in Scotland county.  Evaluations were conducted for both forums.

 

Back to partnership page