TEEN SMOKING PREVENTION AND CESSATION VIA CD ROM PROGRAM

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DESCRIPTION (Adapted from applicant's abstract): The recent studies indicated that the existing smoking prevention cessation strategies have failed to produce population reductions in teen smoking prevalence. This is despite significant progress in intervention development and increasing financial investments in anti-smoking activities. The investigators believe several possible explanations merit consideration for this paradox. First, effective smoking prevention programs have not been widely disseminated. Second, when adopted, teachers often fail to adhere to program guidelines. Third, teens who smoke are reluctant to identify themselves to seek cessation assistance. Fourth, smoking prevention and cessation programs often fail to account for salient individual differences among students. Finally, most existing smoking prevention and cessation programs do not utilize modern communication technologies and do not meet the demands of today's adolescents. The goal of the proposed project is to design, implement, and evaluate an interactive CD-ROM curriculum aimed at adolescent smoking prevention and cessation intervention. By interactive, we mean assessing each student individually and channeling him or her into the most appropriate intervention. The software will assess student smoking status, stages of change for smoking acquisition and cessation, level of addiction, and symptoms of depression. In this manner, recruitment of smokers is facilitated because both smoking and nonsmoking students will be asked to participate in the program and the intervention they receive will be customized to meet their individual needs. The intervention will also be tailored to gender and ethnicity. By utilizing CD-ROM the investigators hope to facilitate subjects' adherence to intervention protocols and subsequent program dissemination. The investigators hypothesize the intervention will result in: a) lower onset of smoking; b) greater smoking cessation outcomes; and c) impact on variables that mediate the process of change compared to an alternative treatment control group. The study design is an 18-month, group-randomized, controlled trial. Study participants will include students 14-16 years of age (10" graders at baseline) from 16 Houston area high schools.