Cancer is the second leading killer in the United States. In order to achieve the National Cancer Institute's (NCI) goal of 50% reduction in cancer mortality by the year 2000, prevention education will need to be more accessible to and elicit behavior change from more people. Children and youth are the population which are at the greatest risk for adopting a tobacco use habit. Since tobacco use is a major cause of many cancers, children need information and behavioral guidance to help prevent the onset on tobacco use. The goal of the overall project is to develop and provide full-tested materials to educate and assist children in preventing tobacco initiation.
The specific aim of this phase I is to create and test a prototype interactive multimedia CD-ROM. The technical objectives will be to: 1) refine the information needs of 10-12 year old children for tobacco use prevention 2) acquire the content materials needed 3) create a prototype interactive multimedia CD-ROM 4) focus test and update program Targeted to 10-12 year old children, we aim to distribute the final program to schools, agencies that provide services to 10-12 year old children and the home.
There are 16,661 public elementary and secondary education agencies or districts in the United States. These districts are made up of membership which range from 0 to over 100,000 schools. Additionally, there are over 6 million children in this age range.
