PREPARED BY:
Healthy Schools
DATE:
2024-05-16
SUBJECT:
Break the Vape Challenge
BACKGROUND/PURPOSE
While data tell us that over the past few decades, there has been a decline in the number of young Canadians smoking cigarettes and using tobacco products, the emergence of vapour products has caused a shift in the types of nicotine products youth are using. This increase is putting them at risk of becoming addicted to nicotine. The tobacco industry continues to target younger people with appealing flavours, packaging, and devices and vapour products are the most used nicotine product among youth (Physicians for Smoke-Free Canada, 2021). In Windsor-Essex 5.6% of students in grades 7 to 12 are daily vapers (Ontario Student Drug Use and Health Survey, 2023). The use of nicotine before age 25 can impact learning, memory, attention, and increase the risk for addiction to other substances. During the 2022-2023 school year, the Healthy School department had over 100 interactions with schools around support for vaping education and enforcement. As a result, the WECHU launched the Break the Vape Challenge as part of a wider strategy to bring raise awareness, educate with the intent of decreasing youth vaping.
The purpose of the Break the Vape Challenge was to engage Windsor and Essex County students in grades 6 to 12 with an opportunity to use their voice to learn about and raise awareness of the dangers of vaping. Providing youth with evidence-based information increases their knowledge to make informed decisions to initiate or quit vaping. Students were asked to create and submit a 30 second Public Service Announcement (PSA) video that included at least one key message about the dangers of vaping and one call to action. The challenge used a full youth engagement approach, starting with the development of the challenge, to the selection of videos for public voting. This approach ensured the components of the challenge and messages resonated with youth, with the goal of having greater youth buy-in and increased awareness of the health effects of vaping and nicotine. A panel of youth judges voted for their top 5 videos from each category to narrow the entries down for public voting. Prizes were awarded to students for the top voted videos, and to publicly funded schools with the highest participation rates. The winning PSA videos will be promoted to continue to raise awareness around the harms associated with vaping.
DISCUSSION
The submission period for the challenge took place from February 5 to March 8. To promote the challenge our Healthy School nurses conducted 19 lunch and learns at secondary schools focused on providing information about the contest and vaping resources. The challenge received 98 video submissions (57 for the grade 6 to 8 category and 41 for the grade 9 to 12) totaling 238 participating students. A total of 30 youth judges participated in scoring the qualified videos over 3 sessions. Videos were scored using 8 questions focused on the messaging and quality of the videos. The top five scoring videos from each category were then selected for public voting which took place from April 15 to April 26. Over 2,700 votes determined the winners. The winning videos were announced on May 3rd, the following videos and schools won the challenge:
Grade 6 to 8:
- 1st place: Échappe le vape - Christina K., Alexandra K., Josephine L., and Sophie L.: École élémentaire catholique Saint-Edmond
- 2nd place: Escape the Vape -Joshua F., Sam L., and Chris H.: St. John the Baptist Catholic Elementary School
- 3rd place: Stop the Peer Pressure - Aeden A.B., Aidan C., Jaden L., and Leah B.: St. John the Baptist Catholic Elementary School
- Elementary school- Highest percentage of participating students prize: École élémentaire catholique Saint-Edmond
Grade 9 to 12:
- 1st place: Break the Vape for Mental and Physical Health - Julia P. and Kailey Y.: St. Thomas of Villanova Catholic Secondary School
- 2nd place: Anti-Vape PSA - Reihan P., Joshua P., and Cory L.: Catholic Central Highschool
- 3rd place: I was told it was trendy... - Timothy L.: Assumption College Catholic High School
- Secondary school- Highest percentage of participating students’ prize: E'cole secondaire catholique EJ Lajeunesse
Moving forward, the Healthy Schools department plans to use the winning videos to further promote awareness around the youth vaping issue and promote resources for those looking to quit. You can find more information about the challenge and view the winning videos on the Break the Vape Challenge web page.