Grant: Operating Grant - PA: First Nations, Inuit and Metis Health

Smoking continues to be a serious health issue amongst Aboriginal peoples in Canada, and is of particular concern in youth. Tobacco intervention programs targeted towards youth must be guided by youth to be effective. Aboriginal youth are known to require different tobacco control strategies compared to non-Aboriginal youth. This research will explore if a social media intervention developed by Aboriginal youth (specifically videos to be available through YouTube) can be an effective means for encouraging smoking prevention and/or cessation amongst youth and others in Aboriginal communities. Aboriginal students from a remote school in the Northwest Territories and an urban school in Edmonton will develop and produce videos on smoking. The videos will be uploaded to YouTube, and the best video from each school determined through YouTube voting and a contest in their schools and other Aboriginal schools. Through using a participatory approach for intervention development, and targeting the types of media most accessed by youth, the outcomes of this project have the potential to significantly impact smoking prevention and/or cessation for Aboriginal youth. The longer-term impacts on the youth and their communities will be evaluated. Broad dissemination of the videos and process documentaries provides the opportunity to extend this impact from a local to national/global level. It will also facilitate knowledge translation about the approach and outcomes that will help improve future programs and policies for Aboriginal youth.