News Release

By TOM HUGHES
UNC School of Medicine

CHAPEL HILL -- A state initiative sponsored by the N.C. Health and Wellness Trust Fund (HWTF) and aimed at preventing and reducing tobacco use among North Carolina teens has achieved very good results after one year, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researchers said in their first evaluation report.

The teen tobacco prevention initiative, created in 2002 by the HWTF, awarded more than $6 million last year to coalitions in communities, schools and organizations working to prevent and reduce teen tobacco use, and media campaigns supporting the efforts.

"The statewide programs funded under the HWTF’s teen tobacco prevention and cessation initiatives have achieved very good results across most programs in a remarkably short period of time," said Dr. Adam Goldstein, director of UNC’s Tobacco Prevention and Evaluation Programs and an associate professor of family medicine in UNC’s School of Medicine.

"In our first comprehensive report, we have documented substantial progress toward achieving many of the primary goals of the initiative, including preventing youth from starting to smoke, reducing second-hand smoke exposure for youth, improved youth cessation opportunities and attention to disparities in youth tobacco use."

The report identifies 11 accomplishments achieved by the program in its first year, including the development of a statewide network, substantive collaboration and leadership, increased involvement of youth, more than 1,500 tobacco-control events by local and statewide coalitions and eight new 100-percent tobacco-free school policies in counties served by grantees.

In addition to school and community programs, grants also were awarded to four organizations that work to reduce tobacco use among African-American, American Indian and Hispanic young people, churches, a teen tobacco cessation program run by the American Lung Association’s N.C. chapter and to a cessation program for pregnant teens offered by the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services.

UNC’s Tobacco Prevention and Evaluation Programs, or TPEP, based in the School of Medicine’s department of family medicine, was selected to evaluate whether or not grant recipients were meeting their stated goals and how to strengthen the overall program.

Because North Carolina is still spending less on tobacco prevention than recommended by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the report recommends that the state continue seeking ways to increase program funding. At the same time, it recognizes that a significant accomplishment of the HWTF in the first year was increased funding for its teen tobacco prevention initiatives, increasing annual funds from $6.2 million to $10.4 million a year.

This resulted in North Carolina moving from 33^rd to 30^th in national rankings for allocation of dollars to tobacco use prevention. For the second year, the report recommends additional funding for the program, adding that an additional $5 million annually would move the state up to 23^rd based on 2004 national rankings for allocations of dollars to state tobacco use prevention.

The UNC researchers also recommend:

· Having grant recipients perform public education for benefits of increasing the state’s tobacco excise tax as a proven way to reduce youth tobacco use.

· Increasing collaboration across grantee programs to assist all schools without 100 percent tobacco-free school policies to adopt them.

· Continuing to increase the quality, intensity and evaluation of advertisements used in the program’s TRU (Tobacco Reality Unfiltered) media campaign.

· Encouraging all grant recipients to conduct tobacco control events aimed at reducing second-hand tobacco smoke in public places that young people frequent, such as schools, restaurants, malls, stores, entertainment venues and homes.

"Our first-year evaluation report shows not only accomplishments of the initiative’s programs, but also provides evidence supporting substantive changes that can only strengthen the program in the coming years," said Dr. George Gamble, associate director of TPEP. "While long-term outcome data will only become available at the end of the initial three-year grant cycle, the initiative is showing an ability to make significant contributions to improving the health of thousands of North Carolina youth."

To download the report, click on www.fammed.unc.edu/tpep/hwtfceval/reports/annual04.pdf.

- 30 -

Note: Contact Goldstein at (919) 966-4090 or adam_goldstein@med.unc.edu. Contact Gamble at (919) 843-9751 or george_gamble@med.unc.edu.

School of Medicine contact: Stephanie Crayton-Robinson, (919) 966-2860 or scrayton@unch.unc.edu.