Not Buying It: Teens speak out against tobacco

By Kyrie Long Alaska Pulse Monthly T he last decade heralded in a wave of new trends and topics, including new tobacco products and devices.

But it also brought in a new generation of teens standing against the harmful effects of nicotine and tobacco use. Leena Robinson, a 16-year-old from Nenana, said many people in her life are addicted to tobacco and have been affected by it. She’s a part of a group called Youth Encouraging Alaskans’ Health.

“So, I decided I was going to learn facts about tobacco and what the harms were,” she said, “and so I can tell my relatives that there are many problems with tobacco and this is why.”

Now there’s a campaign in Alaska, made with teen input, to spread that message far and wide.

It’s the “Not Buying It” campaign, where the teen input helped develop messages that would resonate better with their age group. An urgent response Teen use of vaping or e-cigarettes has risen so high that in December 2018 Surgeon General Jerome Adams declared it an epidemic in the U.S. Starting in summer 2019, EVALI, an acronym for “e-cigarette, or vaping, product use-associated lung illness,” swept through the United States. The state saw its first confirmed case in November, after a teenager in Southeast Alaska was hospitalized.

In late December, Congress elected to raise the age for purchasing tobacco to 21 nationwide, and President Donald Trump signed the new restriction into law on Dec. 20. By January 2020, the president’s administration announced flavor restrictions, to include fruit and mint flavors, for cartridge-based e-cigarettes.

Alaskans were at work throughout 2019 to engage Alaska’s young people on the subject.

“This campaign was put together in part because of the increase in teen vaping use that we were seeing in public health. EVALI came along afterwards,” said Cheley Grigsby, program manager for the Alaska Tobacco Prevention and Control Program, a part of the Alaska Department of Health and Social Ser vices. Centers for Disease Control and Pre vention uses to reach young people is to engage them in what you’re doing, according to Grigsby. over the last few years it became clear that we needed to do a better job get ting the message to those that are high school age about the harms of tobacco use and e-cigarette use,” Grigsby said. and public health messaging aren’t always the target audience, Grigsby noted, but they work with them to help “make sure we’re resonating the correct message with that target audience.” focuses on e-cigarettes, it also tackles more traditional products, like cigarettes and smokeless tobacco, according to Amanda Estes, director of client services with Northwest Strategies. products,” Estes said. contractor for the Tobacco Preven tion and Control program, according to Estes, and is “working on messaging directly to youth about tobacco preven tion efforts.”

Control Program, a part of the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services.

One of the best practices the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention uses to reach young people is to engage them in what you’re doing, according to Grigsby.

“So with the increase of e-cigarette use over the last few years it became clear that we needed to do a better job getting the message to those that are high school age about the harms of tobacco use and e-cigarette use,” Grigsby said. Most kids already involved in tobacco and public health messaging aren’t always the target audience, Grigsby noted, but they work with them to help “make sure we’re resonating the correct message with that target audience.” While the Not Buying It campaign focuses on e-cigarettes, it also tackles more traditional products, like cigarettes and smokeless tobacco, according to Amanda Estes, director of client services with Northwest Strategies.

“So we really are taking on all nicotine products,” Estes said.

Northwest Strategies is the media contractor for the Tobacco Prevention and Control program, according to Estes, and is “working on messaging directly to youth about tobacco prevention efforts.”

Insight from the kids The teens in Youth Encouraging Alaskans’ Health do a lot of tobacco prevention activities in their communities and hold a yearly summit, which is where Northwest Strategies first showed them the preliminary materials for the Not Buying It campaign in October 2018.

“From the first initial conversation we had some materials that were actually developed for an adult audience, but we wanted it run by the teens to see if it was a message that resonated with them as well,” Estes said.

Two of their initial pieces seemed to resonate with the teens, according to Estes, and they ran some messaging by them where they were able to get main themes and what media channels the kids were using. This led the creators to YouTube, Facebook, Spotify and “all

Nenana City School students were named one of the nation’s 100 state finalists in the national Samsung STEM competition. Teacher Mindy Jacobsen stands with, left to right in back, Aine Coy, Sophie McManus, Dominic Reames and front, Sean Richard and Trentin Stone. Kris Capps photo

By Kris Capps Alaska Pulse Monthly I nterior Alaska students are looking for ways to improve their communities and maybe win some funding for their schools along the way. Both Nenana City School and North Pole Middle School are already benefiting from their students looking into the future. Teams at both those schools are among the nation’s 100 state winners in the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow contest, chosen from among 20,000 entrants.

A handful of Nenana eighth graders are designing a patch and mobile app to help monitor student vaping and to help them quit. The North Pole sixth graders are creating a wearable device to help students with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder focus in the classroom. Both are now working on developing prototypes.

This contest, in its 10th year, challenges students in sixth through 12th grades to creatively use STEM — science, technology, engineering and math — skills to address real-world issues in their communities. Because they are among the nation’s 100 state winners, Nenana City School and North Pole Middle School will each receive $15,000 in technology to mark the achievement. Each school also receives a Samsung video kit for the next step of the project. Both classes are slated to create and submit a three-minute video that showcases their project and how it addresses the issue they selected. That video could enable them to advance to the next phase of the contest and win additional prizes and educational opportunities. In Nenana, a student-led survey revealed that 53% of sixth through 12th graders at the school have tried vaping at least once.

This team of students thinks the percentage is actually higher, because a lot of students were absent the day they conducted the survey.

AA student on the team wondered if a patch, like a nicotine patch, could be linked to an app to document usage — only this patch would detect nicotine in the body, not release a substance to help people quit smoking. Maybe the patch being created by the students would

STEM » 14

Teacher Anna Creamer with North Pole Middle School students left to right, Danika Dawley, Lucy Reese, and Raegan Kingry. This team is among the nation’s 100 state winners in Samsung’s national STEM contest. Courtesy Anna Creamer

change color. Users could then start tracking usage and find ways to reduce use. The patch project would include links to resources helpful to anyone wanting to quit vaping. This is a tool for students or parents could use to help their students, the class said. In North Pole, students want to help classmates who have trouble concentrating for long periods of time, ultimately affecting their academic performance.

“They did a lot of research about the issue,” teacher Anna Creamer said. “They settled on the idea of vibration in a bracelet to help students focus.” “The user can program it to buzz at intervals,” she added. The timing can STEM Continued from 13

be determined to fit each student. The idea is that stimulus will remind the students to focus when the mind starts to wander.

Students liked this idea because it is a gentle reminder that is nonconfrontational and nonverbal. And it looks nice to wear, so it’s not obvious, she added. The three-minute videos were due Feb. 20. Twenty national finalists were to be selected for the next phase (after this edition of Alaska Pulse Monthly went to the printer), and then five grand prize national winning teams will travel to Washington, D.C., to present their projects to members of Congress. Public voting will determine a Community Choice winner from the 20 national finalists.

Contact staff writer Kris Capps at 459-7546. Email her at kcapps@AlaskaPulse.com

digital campaigns.”

They also got input on the logo, which Estes described as having a “fun looking feel” with vibrant colors. A Face book group for Not Buying It went up in May, and they’ve continued reaching out to teens across the state ever since. “We’re going to continue moving forward. There’ll be more campaign ele ments developed throughout this year and into the foreseeable future as this is a big issue for the state and nationally,” Estes said.

The company’s next step would be put ting together a youth advisory panel and seeing where it goes after six months, Estes said, and youths will help develop campaign messaging whether it be social media, Facebook posts, digital ads or campaigns and whatever it is they’re pas sionate about.

Working with the kids so far has been great, Estes said.

“They’re really responsive. The group we’ve been working with, they are youth ambassadors so they are really involved in this messaging and they’re really passion ate about it,” she said, adding that they’ve got some connection to tobacco that makes them want to be engaged.

Robinson, the teen from Nenana, has been a part of Youth Encouraging Alaskans’ Health for three years. Her home community of Nenana, about an hour south of Fairbanks, usually holds an annual prevention carnival where people can celebrate and have fun without engaging in substance use.

She feels pretty good about the efforts the YEAH teens.

“I think we are making a difference very slowly, but surely.” TOBACCO Continued from 13

Contact staff writer Kyrie Long at 459-7510. Email her at klong@AlaskaPulse.com

Did you know? =

According to State of Alaska statistics, smoking among high school students has declined 73%, from 36.5% in 1995 to 9.9% in 2017. In 2017 more high school students used e-cigarettes (15.7%) than smoked cigarettes. Alaska Native high school students are significantly more likely to smoke than nonNative students, although the gap has decreased considerably since 2003.