Houston-based University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and a local Houston school district are partnering on an evidence-based, youth-oriented tobacco prevention and cessation program for all 110,000 middle school and high school students in the district.
The program, A Smoking Prevention Interactive Experience will be made available to health and physical education classes across 46 schools in the Houston area in both English and Spanish.
ASPIRE incorporates videogame-like components, custom messaging, graphics, animation and streaming video to teach students about the dangers of tobacco usage to encourage them quit smoking.
"The vast majority of current smokers started before the age of 18. Each day approximately 3,200 adolescents start smoking," said Alex Prokhorov, MD, PhD, and co-creator of the ASPIRE program. "Previous approaches were no longer effective in preventing youth tobacco use, so we developed a more appealing program for today’s youth."
Dr. Prokhorov developed and launched the program in 2001. Since then, the program was translated into Spanish in 2011 and made available on mobile devices in 2013, with more information about emerging tobacco products, such as e-cigarettes.
Researchers and school administrators first tested the ASPIRE program in 16 Houston-based schools in the early 2000s. Since it's release, more than 14,000 students have engaged with the program.