Cancer is the second leading killer in the United States. To achieve the goal of 50 percent reduction in cancer mortality by the year 2000, prevention education will need to be more accessible to and elicit behavior change from more people. Considering that smoking is the single most important preventable cause of illness and premature death in the United States, it is more than appropriate to pursue innovative techniques for providing tobacco use prevention. Children and youth are the population which are at the greatest risk for adopting a tobacco use habit. Since age at tobacco initiation continues to drop while percent of smokers in teens continues to rise, it is clear that children need information and behavioral guidance to help prevent the onset of tobacco use. Furthermore, they need a way to get this information that they find exciting, engaging and challenging. The applicant propose(s) electronic lessons and activities on tobacco use prevention on a cross platform CD-ROM and on World Wide Web site. Targeted to 10 to 12 year old children, the program will be distributed throughout schools nationwide, with additional opportunities for distribution in hospital-based community education programs, public health agencies, community based outreach programs, museums, and private homes.
This project will create a cross-platform CD-ROM and a web site that will be commercially targeted primarily to schools for children age 10- 12. There are 16,661 public elementary and secondary education agencies or districts in the United States. These districts range from 0 to over 100,000 schools. Additionally, there are over 6 million children in this age range. Commercial outreach will also be aimed at hospital-based community education programs, public health agencies, community-based outreach programs, museums, and private homes.
