A seed planted by TRDRP funding has blossomed into a statewide program that trains youth through a collaboration between California’s “Friday Night Live” Partnership and the Thirdhand Smoke Resource Center
In 2021, Los Angeles high school sophomore Rosalia Park noticed that bathrooms in her tobacco-free school reeked of smoke and vapors. As a student who does not smoke or vape, she felt concerned about how it might affect her health, not to mention the health of other students. Her next steps not only changed her life but also planted a seed that has opened a door for engagement of hundreds of student researchers across the state.
Ms. Park reached out to the TRDRP-funded Thirdhand Smoke Resource Center (THSRC) housed at San Diego State University Research Foundation (SDSURF), for help in designing a research project during a summer internship. With the guidance of THSRC Associate Director Dr. Lydia Greiner, Ms. Park tested for thirdhand smoke in school bathrooms using DIY (do-it-yourself) kits during the following school year. “She knew that most of her peers had no idea about thirdhand smoke,” says Dr. Greiner.
Thirdhand smoke is “the chemical residue that is left behind on clothes, skin, furniture, walls and other surfaces after someone smokes. It remains in indoor environments, and the chemicals on the surface and in dust react to make additional pollutants and re-emit back into the air,” according to the THSRC. The public knows more about secondhand smoke—smoke suspended in the air that may be inhaled by others—while less is known about thirdhand smoke and its dangers.[i],[ii]
To change that, TRDRP funded the ‘California Thirdhand Smoke Research Consortium’ in 2011, an interdisciplinary effort that included researchers from SDSU as well as Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the University of California Riverside, the University of Southern California, and the University of California San Francisco. In 2018, to expand outreach to the public, the Thirdhand Smoke Research Center was founded at SDSU with TRDRP funding.
An Accessible Research Innovation
The DIY kits that Ms. Park used in her project were developed by THSRC investigators with a TRDRP Research Award to assist California residents who were concerned about thirdhand smoke in their homes, cars and workplaces.
The DIY kits ultimately provided an innovative way to enable “community science” research during the pandemic, an unanticipated outcome. Easy to use by students—or any community member—the kits require little supervision. The kits have clear directions and include wet wipes for sampling thirdhand tobacco smoke residue on stalls and walls. They also include silicone wristbands, which serve as passive sampling devices to collect tobacco residue, indicating vaping or smoking.
After her school administrators signed off on the project, “Rosa collected the surface wipe samples and silicone wristbands, [then] she sent them back to THSRC for testing and analysis,” explains Dr. Greiner. “Once the analysis was completed, we sent the results back to Rosa, who shared them with her school administrator.” The results were stunning: in 6 out of 10 bathrooms, wipes showed nicotine levels similar to those in homes where people actively smoke or vape inside (38 to 258µg/m2). Three of six bathrooms had levels over 200µg/m2, levels typically seen in casinos and homes where people actively smoke.
Training Future Researchers
Ms. Park’s project not only won first place at her school science fair, but it also won state and national SkillsUSA competitions.[iii] These accomplishments almost certainly helped her gain acceptance to UCLA, where she is now an undergraduate. Yet this student research success story has not ended with Park.
Telling her story inspired another project that will train many more - students like her across the state: a collaboration between THSRC and the California Friday Night Live Partnership, an innovative, fun-filled youth leadership development program focusing on substance use prevention.
Along with SDSU’s Center for Tobacco in the Environment Coordinator Dr. Sarah Lavallee, Dr. Greiner presented Rosa’s story at the 2023 Tobacco-Use Prevention Education (TUPE) Coordinators Meeting. TUPE’s mission, under the California Department of Education, is “to prevent and reduce tobacco and vape use among California school-aged youth.” Among other things, they fund innovative programs to help achieve the California Endgame, ending the commercial tobacco epidemic in California.
Drs. Greiner and Lavallee’s presentation about Ms. Park’s research caught the attention of not only the Friday Night Live leaders, but also TUPE’s state leadership. Could this, perhaps, be scaled to other high schools throughout the state?
“When I heard about this opportunity, I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, this would be fantastic’,” says Sarah Planche, TUPE Education Administrator. “The California Friday Night Live Partnership are absolute experts in understanding positive youth development and creating environments for youth and adult allies… to figure out what the youth care about and to create an environment in which they can start learning, and maybe even building a skill set about issues that they're passionate about.”
Friday Night Live Inspires Youth
The California Friday Night Live Partnership with TUPE started in 1984, and today, chapters exist in 53 of the state’s 58 counties. Through local chapters that meet in schools or nearby facilities, adult allies engage youth through programs focused on alcohol, tobacco, gambling, drugs, and traffic safety. Youth guide the programming based on their interests and receive training in leadership, research, and advocacy. They’re also encouraged to care about one another and their environment. The kids love it. One high school student participant from El Dorado County, Anna Schifferle, who serves on FNL’s California Youth Council, says “I couldn’t imagine a life without FNL.”[iv]
“Friday Night Live solicits input and feedback from youth,” says Ms. Planche. Those running the programs ask students, “What do you care about? and then build [student] capacity to do something with it through advocacy, educational presentations, and, in this instance, the SDSU project.”
The collaboration between the THSRC and Friday Night Live, has selected 20 chapters from across the state to participate in research projects like Park’s, whereby they’ll measure nicotine levels in school bathrooms. Students will receive training in how to collect samples using DIY kits similar to the ones Park used. Each selected school will have a team collecting samples from 5 bathrooms over several months, send them back for analysis, and then ultimately present the findings at their FNL chapters, and ideally, other events.
“There's a lot of interest in this,” says Dr. Lavallee, who serves as the project’s Principal Investigator. Selecting the locations for sample collection depends on students’ experiences with vaping in their school along with the school administrators, who must agree to participate. “We're aiming to get the kits out at the beginning of January, and then have most of the results back by April.”
Kicking Off the Program
The collaboration officially kicked off in the summer of 2024 with funding through June 2026. At Friday Night Live’s Youth Summit, held October 19th and 20th in Anaheim, FNL and THRSC presented the idea to youth and their chapter leaders. Chapters have applied to participate and those selected will soon be sent the DIY kits with further training offered by the THSRC investigators and staff.
“Lydia made it clear that [THSRC] would provide the youth with reports, training, and educational materials to help them understand the dangers of thirdhand smoke,” adds Ms. Planche. “I asked them to take it a step further. I expect them to share this information with staff, principals, parents,” perhaps even city councils, “so that community members are aware of the dangers of thirdhand smoke in their community and in our schools.” Outside of the student program, THSRC makes kits available to people throughout the state, if requested, to test for tobacco residue in multi-family housing and other locations.
“FNL youth partners will drive change, making their communities and environments healthier for all,” says Katelyn Williford, Grant Coordinator for FNL Partnership. “This experience… has the potential to inspire career paths in science, public health, and beyond.”
“This [project] grew from the experience of the pandemic, when the research project was shut down,” says TRDRP Program Officer Dr. Debbie Colosi, who oversees THSRC’s TRDRP funding. “The beauty of having gone through that and then the researchers [developed] an innovative solution with this kit—and now it's part of a greater educational enterprise, it's fun to see this outcome.”
The project also meets the TRDRP goal of building a pipeline to train tobacco prevention scientists and public health workers who reflect the diversity of California. Often, these pipeline programs start at the university level, so everyone involved in the collaboration is excited to see high school students not only passionate about taking charge of their health but also gaining critical workforce skills in the process.
[i] Northrup TF, Jacob P, 3rd, Benowitz NL, et al. Thirdhand Smoke: State of the Science and a Call for Policy Expansion. Public Health Rep 2016;131(2):233-8. doi: 10.1177/003335491613100206. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4765971/.
[ii] Matt GE, Greiner L, Record RA, et al. Policy-relevant Differences Between Secondhand and Thirdhand Smoke: Strengthening Protections from Involuntary Exposure to Tobacco Smoke Pollutants. Tob Control 2023; Jun 1:tc-2023-057971. doi:10.1136/tc-2023-057971. https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/33/6/798.
[iii] California High School Student Finds School Bathrooms are Polluted with Thirdhand Smoke Residue. https://thirdhandsmoke.org/california-high-school-student-finds-school-bathrooms-are-polluted-with-thirdhand-smoke-residue/ [accessed 18 Oct 2024].
[iv] Amplify FNL. Friday Night Live 2024 Youth Summit Agenda-at-a-Glance. https://fridaynightlive.tcoe.org/docs/default-source/24-25/compressed-website-version_amplify-fnl-final-youth-summit-agenda-2024.pdf [accessed 18 Oct 2024].
Written by Wendee Nicole Holtcamp
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