In 2004 Saving Faces carried out a survey to see just how effective the national curriculum for tobacco education is and how it might be improved on. Once teenagers begin to smoke, they can quickly become addicted to nicotine and this, together with the social and psychological factors associated with smoking, makes it difficult for them to stop.
This study showed that the ‘shock tactic’ approach to smoking prevention had a lot of student support and that mouth cancer could prove to be an excellent deterrent against smoking.
In 2007, Saving Faces conducted a study in secondary schools. Nearly 8000 Year 10 pupils completed a short questionnaire about smoking. Facial surgeons then visited 18 schools to give a visually shocking presentation about the link between smoking and mouth cancer. Eighteen months later, those pupils who recalled the talk were significantly less likely to smoke than students in schools that had received only standard anti-tobacco education. Surprisingly, the talk had more impact on boys.
The results of the oringal 2004 survey have been published by the highly rated journal Health Education Research. Read the full report here.