Tobacco-free school policy adoption in Oklahoma

Tobacco free school policies both protect youth, staff and the public from secondhand smoke exposure and reinforce classroom messages about the dangers of smoking. When states try to persuade school districts to adopt policies they often either use equal effort across the state or they use a shotgun approach. Understanding the factors which increase the probability of adoption would help better target these efforts. Because Oklahoma has over 500 school districts it provides a natural laboratory for examining such factors. From two school districts with “24/7” tobacco-free policies in 1999, there were 122 districts with policies at the end of 2007. Another 15 districts are expected to pass policies during the second half of the school year. Oklahoma has used a geographic information system (GIS) to monitor and evaluate this adoption and help understand the factors which impact adoption. This GIS system uses data from a school policy tracking database and data from the State Department of Education. The GIS system is supplemented by qualitative data gathered by the School Program Specialist in the state Tobacco Use Prevention Service office. In addition to providing an understanding of the process, maps produced by the system have been used to advocate for district policies. This paper will discuss the development of the system and the findings it has produced. The findings may be generalized to campaigns for adoption of other school policies such as vending machine policies.