County Taking Quit-Smoking Message To Schools

SEBRING - To kick butts, Tobacco Prevention Specialist Donna Noel Stayton thought about donning a cigarette costume to hand out fliers about the dangers of smoking.

"Don't be a butt," Stayton said Monday at the Highlands County Health Department. People will say "oh no, here comes the lady with her cigarette costume."

After working as a county health educator, Stayton assumed her new title Jan. 25 and specific mission, to combat smoking, after the county received a $388,000 grant for tobacco prevention.

"We are so excited about this opportunity," she said.

Through the two and a half year grant, Stayton will be involved in second-hand smoke advocacy, informing pregnant women of the dangers to their fetus' and stopping the sale of flavored tobacco.

She will also educate the public about diseases related to smoking - asthma, heart disease, diabetes and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

Stayton is writing a newspaper column this week about smoking and heart disease.

"When I think about heart disease, I think about people who don't exercise and don't eat right," she said. You don't associate smoking with heart disease.

Restarting the Students Working Against Tobacco (S.W.A.T.) program, which ended a few years ago, is also on Stayton's current agenda.

Derek Carlton, county health promotion and marketing supervisor, said, "we're really excited about having the program back here in the county. We are really excited about what we can offer the kids again."

In the five years that S.W.A.T. was here, ending in 2004, it was an extremely good youth-driven program averaging about a 50 percent drop in tobacco use by middle and high school students, he said.

Stayton said, the principals at the county's three high schools have been receptive to reintroducing S.W.A.T. in their schools.

Stayton's timetable includes starting a chapter at Sebring High School this school year and then starting chapters early in the 2008-09 school year at Avon Park and Lake Placid high schools.

Now she is finding a teacher to become the youth S.W.A.T. advisor at Sebring High.

"S.W.A.T. teaches kids leadership skills, presentation skills and builds their self-confidence," Stayton said. "The high school S.W.A.T. members will give talks in the middle schools. The younger kids listen to the older kids more than they listen to me."

Stayton provided the following survey results:

u 18.9 percent of the adults in Highlands County smoke.

u 14.5 percent of the surveyed Florida high school students reported they smoked at least once in the past 30 days. The survey was conducted in 2007.

u 5.8 percent of the state's high school students reported that they are frequent smokers.

u 6.1 percent of the surveyed middle school students in the state reported that they smoked at least once in the past 30 days.