Sela Kreiling and Brook Miller, “Strategies to Reduce Nicotine Addiction among College Students”
Mentor: Rose Hennessy Garza, Public Health
Poster #89

Nicotine addiction is defined as reliance on nicotine to increase dopamine production. Nicotine affects all human body systems, and in some cases, causes cancer. The effects of nicotine use and addiction can be lifelong. A public health program needs to be developed to use evidence and theory to address nicotine addiction among the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee students. A modified version of Intervention Mapping to plan out a hypothetical program will be used. The literature will be identified to define the problem and identify risk/protective factors for modification. An informal review will be conducted of the literature for evidence-based strategies & behavioral health theories. The goal of the public health program is to decrease nicotine addiction. Findings will be synthesized to include a stakeholder engagement plan, a logic model, evidence-based strategies, and the Transtheoretical Model- Stages of Change. Public health programs based on theory and evidence, like our program, assist public health professionals to increase the number of individuals impacted and the program’s success. Stakeholders can assist with informed decisions and could provide program support whilst engaging our community, University of Milwaukee college students will give our program insight into the community’s strongest needs and values. Future public health programming should consider societal-level determinants of nicotine addiction, such as the impact targeted marketing has on young adults and college students related to nicotine use. The percentage of students that used nicotine products daily in the last three months is 21.6%. With this program, the prospective improvement is that students would use fewer nicotine products daily.