The Orange County Health Department recently received a $277,000 grant from the N.C. Health and Wellness Trust Fund for continuation of the Youth Tobacco-Use Prevention and Cessation Program.
The program recruits high school students within the Orange County and Chapel Hill-Carrboro school systems as peer educators who deliver tobacco-prevention messages in middle and high schools and the community.
The health department started the program in 2003 to reduce the number of county teens who use tobacco. Since the program’s inception, the health department has established clubs within all five high schools and recruited more than 120 peer educators.