An Evaluation of the Tobacco Prevention Toolkit Healthy Futures: Alternative-to-Suspension Vaping Intervention

Youth who use tobacco/nicotine products on school campuses are often detained, suspended, or expelled. Healthy Futures: Alternative-to-Suspension is an online curriculum that uses principles of motivational interviewing and cognitive behavioral therapy, incorporating a restorative practice and trauma-informed lens.

The goals of the study are three-fold: (1) Assess changes in the perspectives of school administrators, educators, counselors, and health staff around the feasibility, acceptability, and usefulness of implementing Healthy Futures: Alternative-to-Suspension as an appropriate and effective response to tobacco use on campus (including versus suspension or expulsion); (2) Assess high school students' acceptability and perceptions of Healthy Futures: Alternative-to-Suspension; and (3) Estimate the extent to which Healthy Futures: Alternative-to-Suspension changes high school students' knowledge of, attitudes towards, intentions/susceptibility to use, and actual use of tobacco/nicotine products. The Stanford REACH Lab and California School-Based Health Alliance (CSHA) will partner to evaluate Healthy Futures: Alternative-to-Suspension using a school-based randomized waitlist-controlled trial in 20 high schools in California (n = 10 Healthy Futures: Alternative-to-Suspension treatment schools and 10 control schools).

Inclusion criteria

for schools

• Agree to be randomized to use the Healthy Futures: Alternative-to-Suspension curriculum or to use their current standard of care exclusive of Healthy Futures: Alternative-to-Suspension
• Agree that teachers, counselors, or other school personnel will schedule an online survey prior to and after implementation of Healthy Futures: Alternative-to-Suspension or current standard of care with students caught using e-cigarettes or other tobacco products and with students self-reporting use of those products and seeking help to quit
• Has access to a school nurse/school health officer/school counselor or school psychologist
• Agree that parental consent, where required, will be sought from students prior to survey administration.
• Agree that the study is in the wider interest of the public health of adolescents and in their schools interest.

Inclusion criteria

for participants Adolescents, aged 14-18, from grades 9-12, who are agreeable to participate in the study and provide assent.

Exclusion criteria

Adolescents, aged 14-18 years, from grades 9-12 who do not speak English.