A collaborative partnership to enhance school-based tobacco control policies in West Virginia

Introduction: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Guidelines f or School Health Programs to Prevent Tobacco Use and Addiction were develop ed, in part, to help state and local education agencies implement effective school-based tobacco control programs. This paper: (1) reports on school t obacco policies, one facet of a larger investigation conducted to examine t he consistency between WV's school-based tobacco control policies and progr ams and the CDC Tobacco Guidelines and (2) describes the impact this invest igation had on state policy in WV. Methods: A content analysis was conducted on all (n = 55) county tobacco po licies using a coding protocol developed by the authors. This protocol was designed to enable judgment about whether the county policies addressed par ticular elements specified in the CDC Tobacco Guidelines. Additionally, dat a about school-level policies, collected from a telephone survey of a sampl e of school principals (n = 421), are presented. Since the purpose of the n eeds assessment was to describe current practice, frequencies were computed for both the county and school-level analyses. Results: Both county- and school-level tobacco policies were found lacking in many of the elements recommended in CDC's Tobacco Guidelines, particular ly in the areas of enforcement procedures and access to cessation programs. Conclusions: Two major outcomes resulted from this needs assessment: (I) th e WV State Board of Education's Tobacco Control Policy was revised to be mo re consistent with CDC's Tobacco Guidelines and (2) increased attention is now being focused on providing cessation options for WV schools.