Collaborative Effort Leads To Provincial Tobacco Prevention Strategy
LETHBRIDGE – When University of Lethbridge nursing instructor Kathy Haight took on the task of reinvigorating stale and dated tobacco prevention resources for her nursing students, she had no idea it would turn into a provincial initiative that would eventually launch the Academy for Tobacco Prevention.
Alberta Health Services officially unveiled The Academy today as a partnership developed with the U of L out of the Tobacco Reduction Program. The thrust of the initiative is to provide teachers with a comprehensive resource for students in Grades 4 to 6 to help them understand the risks of tobacco use and learn ways to resist pressure to use such products.
“The resources that I was using to teach my students were developed in 2003, so they were very dated,” says Haight of the genesis of the project. “So much happens in the tobacco industry in terms of both the production of tobacco products and also the legislation associated with their use. The print-based resources were really outdated and when we talk to nursing students about having current evidence, it was a contradiction to be using these resources.”
So she set out to make them current, interactive and digital. In the end, the lessons and resources they created went far beyond anything she could have imagined, including the interactive card game, Shadows of the Academy, that is right out of Hollywood.