DEVELOPMENT OF COMMUNITY KIT FOR TOBACCO PREVENTION

This project will use the World Wide Web as a gateway to educating urban adolescents regarding cancer prevention. Adolescent lifestyle decisions concerning smoking, diet, and exercise effect the risks of contracting cancer as an adult. Interactive multimedia designs, including serial fiction (Internet soaps), will be used to promote healthy lifestyles. Urban adolescents, the target group, will contribute to every facet of design and production. The model developed can be applied to other chronic diseases. Quantitative measures will measure the impact of the product on teenage lifestyles. Phase I research will include development of a creative architecture (characters, styles, and methods to incorporate ongoing interactivity), technical architecture (dissemination into schools), and methods of measuring results. Phase I will produce a working prototype. Focus groups of teenagers and an advisory group of health-care practitioners will be used during the Phase I design process. Phase II will produce and widely distribute the product in the New York City and other urban public schools. Potential technological innovations include on-site interactive deployment within the school system; advanced visual formats to encourage interactive Web- based learning; tracking of behavioral changes through Internet technology; and creation of a technical production environment that is reproducible for other chronic diseases.