Economopoulos, Konstantinos P

Kousoulis, Antonis A

Kympouropoulos, Stylianos P

Pouli, Dimitra K

Vardavas, Constantine I

Economopoulos, Konstantinos P.

Vardavas, Constantine

Harvard University - DASH

 From the classroom to Facebook: a modern approach forsmoking education in adolescents  (Article begins on next page)The Harvard community has made this article openly available.Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters.Citation Kousoulis, Antonis A, Stylianos P Kympouropoulos, Dimitra KPouli, Konstantinos P Economopoulos, and Constantine IVardavas. 2014. “From the classroom to Facebook: a modernapproach for smoking education in adolescents.” TobaccoInduced Diseases 12 (Suppl 1): A19. doi:10.1186/1617-9625-12-S1-A19. http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1617-9625-12-S1-A19.Published Version doi:10.1186/1617-9625-12-S1-A19Accessed February 16, 2015 3:24:35 PM ESTCitable Link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:12717396Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University's DASHrepository, and is made available under the terms and conditionsapplicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth athttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of-use#LAAMEETING ABSTRACT Open AccessFrom the classroom to Facebook: a modernapproach for smoking education in adolescentsAntonis A Kousoulis1,2*, Stylianos P Kympouropoulos2,3, Dimitra K Pouli2,4, Konstantinos P Economopoulos2,5,Constantine I Vardavas6From 11th Annual Conference of the International Society for the Prevention of Tobacco Induced Diseases (ISPTID)Athens, Greece. 9-11 December 2013BackgroundAlthough studies show that a large majority of smokersinitiate smoking while in early adulthood, poor efficacy ofschool smoking-prevention programs has been noted.With the explosive rise in internet use, the imperativeneed to use new forms of media for educational purposeshas emerged more prominently than ever before. In thispaper we briefly describe the design and testing of a smok-ing-related social media-integrated education intervention.Materials and methodsWe describe 5 simple steps towards a successful presenta-tion that will lead to meaningful social media interactions:Steps 1-3 include the careful selection of the presentersand their education on general presentation techniquesand classroom behaviors, as well as the topic in particular.During step 4, the presenters link up with the studentsusing a social media platform, and provide “take-home”key points. Facebook is chosen as the most popular socialnetworking website in which the vast majority of youth isdaily active and already has accounts. Finally, in step 5, thepresenters request the attendees to upload one of the takehome messages as their Facebook status. The rationale isthat the knowledge could, thus, reach a quite larger num-ber of young people than the finite number of attendees.ResultsWe implemented and tested the above algorithm during atobacco control lecture curriculum to 225 high school stu-dents in Athens, Greece, in May 2012. After the lecture, a3-day window was provided to the attendees to connectwith the presenters in Facebook and post a smoking-related sentence in their account status. Assessed 72hrslater, 32 students (14.2%) had posted a smoking-relatedsentence in their Facebook account, a “take-home mes-sage” that was spread to their 20,095 cumulative friends asa note on their wall via newsfeed.ConclusionsOur research describes a successful implementation of aneducational intervention on smoking in high school stu-dents. Should an educational or community based cam-paign utilize a Facebook function and systematize thisalgorithm within a number of schools, the take-home mes-sages heard from the always influential lips of their peers,could reach literally the entire community of adolescentsand presumably lead to social sensitization through offlinenetworks that have an online representation. This algo-rithm and its preliminary implementation adds to the lim-ited existing evidence on how social media may advancetobacco control, and provides insight into a novel way ofproviding health information to youth, a hard to reach andvulnerable population.Authors’ details1Clinic of Social and Family Medicine, Medical School, University of Crete,Heraklion, 71003, Greece.2Society of Junior Doctors, Athens, 15123, Greece.3Department of Psychiatry, General University Hospital “ATTIKON”, Athens,Greece.4School of Medicine, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens,Athens, 115 27, Greece.5Department of Surgery, Massachusetts GeneralHospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, 02114, USA.6Centerfor Global Tobacco Control, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences,Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, 02114, USA.Published: 6 June 2014doi:10.1186/1617-9625-12-S1-A19Cite this article as: Kousoulis et al.: From the classroom to Facebook: amodern approach for smoking education in adolescents. TobaccoInduced Diseases 2014 12(Suppl 1):A19.* Correspondence: antonis.kousoulis@gmail.com1Clinic of Social and Family Medicine, Medical School, University of Crete,Heraklion, 71003, GreeceFull list of author information is available at the end of the articleKousoulis et al. Tobacco Induced Diseases 2014, 12(Suppl 1):A19http://www.tobaccoinduceddiseases.com/content/12/S1/A19© 2014 Kousoulis et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the CreativeCommons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, andreproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver(http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

From the classroom to Facebook: a modern approach for smoking education in adolescents

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From the classroom to Facebook: a modern approach for smoking education in adolescents

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