Photo | Courtesy | UMass Medical School
Tina Grosowsky
February 5, 2020
UMass Medical School vaping program going statewide
Photo | Grant Welker
UMass Medical School
By Grant Welker
In the span of just a few years, vaping has become a habit among high school students and even those in middle school.
Among high schoolers nationally, 27.5% said they vape, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention youth tobacco survey last year. For middle schoolers, it's 10.5%.
A UMass Medical School tobacco-free program that was instrumental in helping to cut down youth cigarette smoking rates is now working to reduce the fast-rising vaping rates.
The school's Center for Tobacco Treatment Research and Training has developed a program called Calling it Quits that will be rolled out at schools statewide this year to train school nurses on how to fight nicotine addiction from vaping. The program is based on the partnership's initial program that was developed through the National Institutes of Health.
[Related: Local health officials are dealing with the vaping fallout]
But while cigarette smoking rates have dropped in recent years, vaping has cut into much of that progress. School nurses have been asking for help in dealing with the issue, said Tina Grosowsky, the project coordinator for the Central Massachusetts Tobacco Free Community Partnership.
"What they have been asking for help on in the last year and a half is with vaping," she said. "It's an epidemic. Schools all across the country have been dealing with this."
Key to the education program, Grosowsky said, is research showing just how easily vaping can become addictive. Studies showed that five or six cigarettes a week would be enough to get someone hooked, she said. But with vaping, a user can go through a pod of nicotine a day, equivalent to a pack a day.
The new vaping program will be offered in person to nurses in Central Massachusetts and through webinars for those outside the area.
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