Twelve Baltimore area high school girls recently spent
one of their coveted days off from school to tape four
television public service announcements at the
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg
School of Public Health. One PSA shows ways to reduce
stress by playing sports, dancing, reading or talking on
the phone rather than smoking. A second shows a girl whose
teeth are yellowed from smoking being rejected by a boy who
saw cigarettes in her purse.
The PSAs are part of a study that was funded by the
Maryland Cigarette Restitution Fund Program and led by
Barbara Curbow, associate professor in the
Department of Health Policy and Management. To guide
the study, she created a committee called Teen Girls
Against Smoking, whose members were recruited from
Baltimore city and county to reflect ethnic and school
Curbow is looking into the reasons why teenage girls
start smoking and ways to change those behaviors.
More than 100 girls, including the seven committee
members, were interviewed about a variety of
smoking-related issues. Four themes emerged from the
interviews: the social environment of smoking, being
offered a cigarette, ways to regulate stress and the health
issues of smoking.
The TGAS members worked with the researchers to select
PSA ideas and then with a media consultant to script and
develop one PSA to correlate with each theme.
Recent research by the American Legacy Foundation
showed a rise in the number of women developing lung
cancer, which indicated more girls are starting to smoke.
According to the Centers for Disease Control 1999 National
Youth Tobacco Survey, 8 percent of middle school girls and
28 percent of high school girls smoke. Reasons girls
initially started smoking were different from those of
boys, and therefore anti-smoking messages must be tailored
by gender. A recent Commonwealth Fund Survey of the Health
of Adolescent Girls showed that smoking rates were higher
for girls with depression, low self-confidence and a
history of abuse.
"The most important thing is recognizing that girls
sometimes turn to smoking because of stress or feelings of
depression," Curbow said. "One of the best things to come
out of this study is that we are addressing those emotional
needs, which typically aren't included in the physical
checkups many children have while growing up."
The PSAs will be given to local television stations
and the state of Maryland so they may be used to persuade
girls not to smoke. Curbow hopes to work with other teen
girls to develop four additional PSAs. She also hopes to
look into the most effective message for smokers versus
nonsmokers to see if they differ.