The 13th World Conference on Tobacco OR Health

Objective: The goal of this project was to use a CBPR approach to work in partnership with Korean teen members of Tobacco Not Tolerated (TNT) to develop and conduct a teen tobacco peer education project targeting youths living in Queens, NY.

Methods: The project consisted of 3 Phases. Phase 1: educate the teen members on tobacco use and the advertising and marketing tools used by the industry. Phase 2: assist the teens in creating an educational workshop to reach their younger peers. And Phase 3: implement the project.

Results: In the course of conducting group discussions and interviews with the teens to develop the workshop curriculum, key concerns and priorities became highlighted. We incorporated the findings and refocused the project into a social action intervention to assess and reduce the amount of community-level tobacco ads visible in the youths' neighborhoods—a project deemed highly important by our teens and community partners. Given the CBPR approach we were able to successfully sustain the project into a policy campaign that earned the support of the NYC Council who passed a ceremonious bill to prohibit store tobacco ads targeting children and held an oversight hearing to explore the issue further. We conclude that the research agenda and questions in community-based health interventions should not be considered immutable but instead needs to be open to negotiation and constant reinvention.