Needs, Barriers, and Challenges in Tobacco Prevention and Intervention Teacher Training Program among School Districts in Florida

Introduction School offers a unique environment in reducing smoking prevalence and initiation. Hence, the purpose of this project was to assess the barriers and challenges, as well as examined current school district needs regarding the participation in tobacco prevention teacher training grant.

Methods Three stages of mixed research methods were utilized. The stage I involved in-depth telephone interviews of randomly selected tobacco prevention coordinators to understand their opinions and experiences regarding teacher training for tobacco prevention. The stage II focused on conducting a statewide survey to school district's tobacco prevention coordinators regarding the teacher training grant. Stage III used phone interview to follow up on randomly selected coordinators to confirm opinions expressed from the survey and to solicit additional suggestions.

Results Results revealed that school's conditions in program adoption were consistent with the literature. The study also showed the school districts: (1) are familiar with tobacco prevention grants and are interested in applying; (2) agree a monetary incentive is a good motivator for teacher's participation; (3) teacher or school recognition can be a motivation to participate; (4) barriers included: policy restrictions, amount of the paperwork, restrictions on purchasing and staffing. More than half of the school districts would be interested in participating if the program is online.

Recommendations Based on the results, we recommend: (1) consider using online program for teacher training and administrative reporting; (2) flexibility in selecting prevention program materials; (3) flexibility in hiring staff, scheduling training sessions and better timing for implementing the program.