Smoking is the number preventable cause of death in our society. According to the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids each day around 4,000 kids try their first cigarette and another 1,500 kids under the age of 18 become new daily smokers. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control reports that 6 million children who are alive today can be expected to die prematurely from a smoking-related disease. In order to prevent this from happening, we must empower students to make healthy lifestyle choices before they become addicted to tobacco.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “Because four out of every five persons who use tobacco begin before they reach adulthood, tobacco prevention activities should focus on school-age children and adolescents.” Research also indicates that there is a strong association between elementary school students’ use of tobacco and their continued use during middle school. Starting prevention programs in the fourth grade allows students to receive anti-tobacco messages before experimentation begins.

Word of Mouth (WOM) is a tobacco prevention program designed to prevent children and adolescents from using tobacco and becoming addicted to nicotine. It targets children in grades 4 through 8, a time when they are most at risk for initiating tobacco use. Investigators have demonstrated that school-based prevention programs that target social influences on smoking and provide youth with the skills to resist those influences can be effective. WOM takes an innovative hands-on approach that incorporates successful prevention strategies along with the use of technology to improve distribution and success of the program. Utilizing both traditional classroom and web-based education, WOM addresses the need for a comprehensive, community-based tobacco prevention program that is easy to implement and evaluate.

WOM Curriculum
The WOM curriculum can be implemented in the classroom setting by using either the traditional classroom curriculum or the web-based curriculum. The WOM lessons are age-appropriate and are designed to help students understand the health effects of tobacco use and learn to build refusal, decision-making and goal-setting skills.

WOM Traditional Curriculum
The WOM traditional curriculum consists of four lessons per grade, starting in the fourth grade and continuing through the eighth grade. Each lesson is 45 minutes long and is taught by a trained facilitator. Each lesson involves an innovative hands-on approach that engages the students directly.

WOM Web-based Curriculum
The WOM web-based curriculum promotes self-paced, web-based learning. The web-based curriculum was adapted from the traditional curriculum it consists of four lessons per grade starting in the fourth grade and continuing through the sixth grade. Students can navigate through each 45 minute lesson, which is facilitated by a trained WOM facilitator. To view a lesson, go to www.clevelandclinic.org/health/wom/demo/01.htm.

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