Smokebusters

Mission statement

Smokebusters is a three-year program dedicated to promoting healthy, tobacco-free environments by decreasing exposure to secondhand smoke and reducing tobacco initiation and use among youth through policy change.

Program summary

Smokebusters is a three-year program based on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Best Practices for Comprehensive Tobacco Control. This project empowers youth grades 8-11 that empowers them to become critical thinkers, avoid tobacco use, and advocate for a tobacco-free environment through policy change.

The three-phase approach has accomplished this by training the same basic group of students for three uninterrupted years and has been instrumental in forming youth into effective environmental policy advocates. Phase I strategies include recognizing the characteristics of audiences, the negative effects of tobacco's chemistry, tobacco advertising's deception, and then developing the self-confidence to advocate for policy change. Phase II includes using media resources for advocacy while collaborating with target sites. Phase III includes learning about Big Tobacco's negative influence, how to use the truth to educate and how to develop skills to approach school boards for change. Throughout the three-year process, the students' school-based activities are able to progress to activism within their communities.

Smokebusters helps youth take ownership of tobacco prevention and environmental issues within their community and state. It focuses on helping youth build skills in the areas of decision-making, problem solving and advocacy. These skills are the foundation for helping youth take responsibility to affect policy change in Missouri schools and communities for tobacco use prevention and smoke-free environments. This will help to assure their own health and that of those around them.

For a visual representation of the project and its timeline, click here.

For Smokebusters staff and state grantees, click here.

Website purpose

This website is divided into two sections. One is for outreach coordinators and facilitators and is password-protected. To get access, please contact Joyce Lara, school coordinator, at laraj@health.missouri.edu. The second section is for mentors and outreach coordinators, where they will find resources to help them implement the program in their schools and communities.

Funders

Smokebusters is partly funded with a Tobacco Prevention and Cessation Initiative Grant provided by the Missouri Foundation for Health. The second funder is the Department of Health and Senior Services' tobacco use prevention funds that was received for the 2009-2010 fiscal year.