Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #116941

Nancy B. Mueller, MPH¹, Jennifer C. Boyce, BS, CHES², Melissa L. Hogan-Watts, MPH³, and Douglas A. Luke, PhD¹. (1) Center for Tobacco Policy Research, Saint Louis University School of Public Health, 3545 Lafayette Ave, Suite 300, St. Louis, MO 63104-1399, (2) Tobacco Prevention Center, Saint Louis Unversity School of Public Health, 3545 Lafayette Avenue, Suite 300, St.Louis, MO 63104, 314-977-8131, boycejc@slu.edu, (3) Jefferson County Health Department, 1818 Lonedell Road, Arnold, MO 63010

There is a high level of inconsistency and variation among school tobacco policies. As efforts increase for supporting comprehensive tobacco policies, the need for a reliable and validated method to evaluate the policies has arisen. Currently, no standardized method exists to assess the comprehensiveness of school tobacco policies. The Center for Tobacco Policy Research systematically developed a rating system to assess the strength of school tobacco policies. Based on the empirical literature and the expertise of an advisory panel consisting of educational leaders and tobacco control advocates and practitioners, a “gold standard” tobacco policy was developed and guided the content of the 40-point rating system. The four domains of the rating system were: tobacco-free environment (14 points), enforcement (12 points), prevention and treatment services (6 points), and policy organization (8 points). The system was pilot-tested using 95 Missouri school district policies and proved to be highly reliable among coders. The evaluated policies represented a large range of variation, with the highest total score of twenty and the lowest score of two. Analyses using socioeconomic and district variables and the total policy scores were also conducted. This presentation will present the development process and study findings. The rating system is a user-friendly, practical tool for tobacco control professionals and educational leadership providing them with the ability to easily evaluate their own school policies. Their evaluation efforts will be useful in strengthening existing policies and developing new comprehensive policies to protect the health of students, staff, administrators, and visitors.

Learning Objectives:

• 1)Identify the key components of a comprehensive school tobacco policy.
• 2)Describe the process of the development of the rating system and its application.

Keywords: Policy/Policy Development, Evaluation

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.

Recorded presentation