Vaping Prevention and Treatment for New Hampshire Pre-teens & Adolescents

In partnership with the NH Department of Health and Human Services since 2019, we have worked to control its segment of the national youth vaping epidemic. In a vote of 5-0, the New Hampshire (NH) Executive Council, responsible for awarding state funding, granted a new award to us to continue its youth vaping prevention work.

Under a previous project, we identified the need for a social-marketing campaign with a focus on developing messages to meet the needs of youth who are experiencing mental health and substance use disorders. Now, with added funding approved, JSI will offer health care providers training and technical assistance on tobacco and nicotine dependence treatment.

Vaping use data from the 2019 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, an anonymous statewide questionnaire, showed that about 34 percent of NH high school students and 50 percent of 12th-grade boys have vaped. Our work is even more important given the release of “Cancer Prevalence in E-Cigarette Users: A Retrospective Cross-Sectional NHANES Study,” published in the World Journal of Oncology through a collaborative research effort by multiple colleges and universities. The study links cancer to vaping, a fact that public health officials knew was on the horizon but is now here. It also shows that E-cigarette users (i.e.,people who vape) were diagnosed with cancer at younger ages than smokers and are more likely to contract different types of cancer than smokers. The imperative to abate youth vaping has accelerated and JSI is responding.

Learn more about our health communications expertise.