Today VicHealth launched Victoria’s first anti-vaping campaign, with Quit Victoria and the Cancer Council of Victoria. A Monash University academic is able to comment on the focus of the campaign and the importance of raising awareness among young people on the harms and risks of e-cigarettes.
Associate Professor Deana Leahy, Monash Faculty of Education
Contact details: +61 3 9903 4840 or [email protected]
Read more from Associate Professor Leahy on Monash Lens
The following comments can be attributed to Associate Professor Leahy who is also a member of the Quit Education Expert Advisory Committee:
“Schools can address vaping in a number of ways that compliment the new VicHealth/Quit media campaign.
“This work usually finds itself in the health education part of the curriculum. But the reality is we need a cross curriculum approach to learning about vaping.
“The best kind of health education is education that purposefully makes connections to subject areas such as science, geography, civics and citizenship, English and media to name a few.
“Ideally we want young people to get the facts about vaping. They also need to learn ways to 'see through the haze' by interrogating the way industry markets target vaping to young people.
“Finally, we want young people to understand why governments decide to regulate vaping and the strategies governments draw on to create healthier communities. Often our usual approach to health education stops well short of this and focuses mainly on the individual health effects but there is much more young people need to be able understand the social and commercial determinants of health.
“We do know schools are short on time and capacity so we need to focus on how we can best support teachers and schools to deliver quality health education.”
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