Reaching Us All: Encouraging Diversity in Community Based Youth Tobacco Prevention

Increased target marketing by the tobacco companies focusing on specific racial, ethnic, and cultural groups underscores the need to step up youth tobacco prevention efforts in these at-risk populations. Although reaching diverse populations is often encouraged as part of a comprehensive community-based youth empowerment campaign, the populations actually engaged in these groups tend to be limited. Uptake trend analysis of national data suggests several population groups are disproportionately at risk for tobacco use. These data further point to upward trends in tobacco uptake in specific populations that occur after high school. The North Carolina Health and Wellness Trust Fund (NCHWTF) and RTI International conducted a needs assessment among the NCHWTF's grantees conducting community-based youth tobacco prevention programming to explore activities designed to engage diverse populations. As a result of this analysis, a Diversity Workgroup was formed to develop strategies and provide resources to facilitate grantees' capacity for reaching multiple diverse youth groups in their communities. The Diversity Toolkit, which includes resources and tools for engaging diverse populations, emerged to provide ready-to-use materials for grantees to use in their local communities. Results of the needs assessment, together with the results from the national data analysis depicting tobacco uptake for diverse population groups in high school and college age populations will be shared. The Web-based toolkit also will be discussed and participants will be provided with instructions on how to access the toolkit for use in reducing tobacco-related health disparities among diverse populations in their communities.