Extrait

Background and study aims Smoking remains the leading cause of ill health and early death in the UK. Preventing young people from taking up smoking is vital to improving public health. More than 1.5 million 16-18 year olds now attend further education (FE) courses in the UK, typically in sixth form colleges and general FE colleges. For many young people, this is the time in their lives when they begin smoking as they make new friends and become more independent from their parents; over 40% of adult smokers say that they started the habit when aged between 16-19 years old. Despite this, there has been little investment in smoking prevention activities in either general FE colleges or sixth form colleges. Here, we will test the Filter FE Challenge, a new smoking prevention project for 16-18 year olds that has been designed to be run in the FE college environment. To do this, we will work with Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) Wales and six colleges (including large FE colleges and smaller sixth form colleges) in Wales. At the moment we don t know if it will be possible to carry out all of the activities of the Filter FE Challenge in full in different types of FE colleges, or if these activities will prove acceptable to staff and students. There may even be unintended consequences that no-one has anticipated and the project may need to be revised. We will therefore assess if the activities were run as intended, if and how this varied in different colleges, and find out people’s views about the process and consequences of this. We also don’t know whether colleges will be willing to be allocated to a control group at random, so we will assess this, and also how many young people are willing to take part in the study. We will also try to estimate the costs of these smoking prevention activities prior to any further research. If the project activities and research are delivered as planned then we intend to proceed to a much larger evaluation to see if the project reduces the uptake of smoking among 16-18 year-olds, by how much, and at what cost. Who can participate? Students aged between 16-18 attending one of the FE colleges taking part in the study. What does the study involve? The colleges taking part in the study are randomly allocated into one of two groups. Those in group 1 run the the Filter FE Challenge project. Those in group 2 continue as usual and act as a control group. At the three colleges where the project is run, ASH Wales provide project managers, education officers, social media experts and trained youth workers to help these colleges to put in place a range of new smoking prevention activities. This includes ensuring those under age 18 cannot buy tobacco products in local shops, implement smoke-free policies and teaching college staff to teach students about the harms of smoking. Existing web-based information, social media campaigns and online services designed for young people are also integrated with the college’s website and social media. Youth workers also provide credible messages about smoking and resisting peer pressure, and signpost support services. What are the possible benefits and risks of participating? To be added Where is the study run from? Cardiff University (UK). When is the study starting and how long is it expected to run for? September 2014 to October 2015. Who is funding the study? National Institute for Health Research (UK). Who is the main contact? Dr Adam Fletcher [email protected]

Critère d'inclusion

• Smoking prevention

Liens

• ictrp
• isrctn