Effects of a short school-based vaping prevention program for high school students.

Educational programs that address adolescents' misperceptions of e-cigarette harms and benefits and increase refusal skills play an important role in preventing initiation and use. This study evaluates changes in adolescents' e-cigarette perceptions, knowledge, refusal skills, and intentions to use following a real-world implementation of a school-based vaping-prevention curriculum. Study participants were 357 9th-12th grade students from one high school in Kentucky, United States who participated in a 60-minute vaping prevention curriculum from the Stanford REACH Lab's Tobacco Prevention Toolkit. Participants completed pre- and post-program assessments regarding their e-cigarette knowledge, perceptions, refusal skills, and intentions to use e-cigarettes. Matched paired t-tests and McNemar tests of paired proportions were applied to assess changes in study outcomes. Following the curriculum, participants indicated statistically significant changes on all 15 survey items related to e-cigarette perceptions (. Participants demonstrated improved knowledge that e-cigarettes deliver nicotine in the form of an aerosol ( <.001), reported that if a friend offered them a vape it would be easier to say no ( <.001), and indicated they would be less likely to take the vape (.001) after receiving the curriculum. Other survey items related to knowledge, refusal skills, and intentions did not demonstrate significant changes. Overall, participation in a single session vaping-prevention curriculum was associated with several positive changes in high school students' e-cigarettes knowledge, perceptions, refusal skills, and intentions. Future evaluations should examine how such changes affect long-term trajectories of e-cigarette use.