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Article Excerpt
Students Against Nicotine and Tobacco Addiction (S.A.N.T.A.) is a community-based participatory research project involving an active collaboration between University health providers and Job Corps students, administrators, teachers, counselors, and staff In this article, we describe the project, its evolution, and key strategies that have employed over the course of the initiative and its ongoing efforts.
Keywords: community-based participatory research, action research, citizen health care, smoking cessation
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Almost 450,000 Americans die each year from diseases that are caused by smoking, and incalculably more suffer from health-related problems caused or exacerbated by the use of those products (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2005a, 2005b, 2007). Approximately 90% of the 26 million men and 22 million women who smoke in the United States began as teenagers or young adults, and half will eventually die from a smoking-related condition (CDC, 2005b; Duke Center for Nicotine and Smoking Cessation Research, 2006; Minnesota Department of Health, 2005). Young adults (18-24 years old) maintain the highest rates of smoking (28.5%) compared with all other age groups (CDC, 2005a, 2005b). Other significant risk factors include low socioeconomic status, low education, and non-Asian minority status (CDC, 2005b; Fiore, 2000; Schoenborn, 2005).
The Hubert H. Humphrey Job Corps Center in St. Paul, Minnesota, is a federal vocational training program for youth ages 16-24 years who maintain a variety of the above-referenced risk factors. Internal surveys and focus groups conducted in 2005 found that more than 60% of its students smoked, with substantial increases in smoking (across both onset and number of cigarettes smoked per day) after arriving at Job Corps (Haas & Harper, 2005). Although almost 70% of smokers wanted to quit (and most had tried in the past), few reported having been successful.
Rising to meet this campus-wide problem, the Students Against Nicotine and Tobacco Addiction (S.A.N.T.A.) project was initiated and launched as a community-based participatory research (CBPR) project involving an active collaboration between University of Minnesota (UMN) medical and mental health providers with Job Corps' students, administrators, teachers, counselors, and staff. In this article, we describe the S.A.N.T.A. project, outline its developmental process and evolution, and highlight key community-engagement strategies that we have employed over the course of the initiative and its ongoing efforts.
STUDENTS AGAINST NICOTINE AND TOBACCO ADDICTION (S.A.N.T.A.)
The S.A.N.T.A. project was initiated in response to a longstanding awareness of widespread smoking at Job Corps, coupled with a frustration regarding the limited scope and effectiveness of conventional cessation programs on site. As Job Corps' representatives (administration and students) began discussing new ways to address smoking with colleagues at the UMN Medical School, CBPR was identified as a methodology that held promise by nature of its departure from top-down, service-delivery approaches in education and treatment.
Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR)
CBPR emphasizes close collaboration among researchers and community participants who are directly affected by an issue to generate knowledge and solve local problems. Hierarchical differences are flattened through this partnership as all participants work together to create knowledge and effect change (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 2004; Lewin, 1946; Mendenhall & Doherty, 2005). Research is not conducted "on" people but "with" them, as community participants take active roles in the entire research process--from conceptualizing problems and formulating solutions to solve them,...
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