New vaping research partnership with VicHealth

New vaping research partnership with VicHealth

by | Health, News, Research and Evaluation

The Behaviour Change Collaborative (The BCC) and VicHealth have joined forces on a major research project to explore teen vaping across Australia.

The project builds on The BCC’s Healthway funded Being Gen Vape research which provided insights into existing vaping attitudes, motivations and behaviours, and a preliminary model for the segmentation of teen vaping behaviour.

The value of quantification is not solely in establishing vaping prevalence but in the ability to profile each segment by motivation (need) and attitudes, behavioural patterns, and trajectory to addiction. This will help to identify whether targeted interventions should be prevention based or cessation based, and for whom.

“We’re pleased to be partnering with VicHealth on such an important public health issue,” said The BCC’s founder and managing director, Luke van der Beeke.

The intent of the research is to provide outputs that help interested parties to set policy and intervention priorities, strategy directions, and intervention activities. We want to contribute to a coordinated, evidence-informed approach to addressing teen vaping. The findings of the research will be delivered in a user-friendly and fit-for-purpose format that can be shared widely across sectors.

“This piece of work is intended to augment existing research projects and activities. Our focus is on the delivery of behaviourally informed findings that can be picked up and used to inform future practice,” Mr van der Beeke said.

Our earlier research clearly indicates that mass reach single-theme messaging will have limited impact with respect to breadth and scale, because of the clear existence of different attitudinal and behavioural teen vaping segments.

This research will help to direct communications content, so that it focused on the right motivation and persuasive message and can be targeted at the right group.

“We’re looking forward to generating findings that can be picked up and used by governments, NGO’s, and other stakeholders to inform health communications campaigns, as well as multi-lever health promotion and social marketing strategies,” Mr van der Beeke said.

If you’re a high school teacher, or the parent of a child in high school and you would like to get involved with this research, please email hello@thebcc.org.au

Image Credit: Sarahj1 via Pixabay

Youth engagement on alcohol nominated for Public Administration Achievement Award

Youth engagement on alcohol nominated for Public Administration Achievement Award

by | Engagement, News

The BCC was recently invited to attend the Institute of Public Administration of WA’s Achievement Awards after a youth consultation process we developed and facilitated for East Metropolitan Health Service (EMHS) was nominated in the 2022 Best Practice in Children’s Consultation category.

In early 2021, The BCC was commissioned by EMHS to support the Belmont, Victoria Park, South Perth Local Drug Action Group (BVPSP LDAG) develop its Youth Alcohol Action Plan. Minimising alcohol use and related harms among young people is a key priority for the LDAG.

Following the facilitation of two successful stakeholder engagement sessions with over 26 local partner organisations, we suggested meaningful consultation with young people was needed to sense check stakeholder outputs, and to obtain additional insight for potential use in the plan.

EMHS immediately supported the idea and leveraged its strong relationships with partner organisations to arrange two sessions with small groups of young people (aged 12-17) in South Perth and Belmont. The sessions were planned and facilitated by The BCC’s Luke van der Beeke, with the support of Olivia O’Connor Liv by Design.

The engagement captured the useful, and at times very candid views of 45 young people on their exposure to, and use of alcohol. We met on their terms, in places they felt comfortable and listened. Then we listened some more.

The sessions were designed to provide young people from a range of socio-economic and cultural backgrounds with the opportunity to have their say in a safe and fun environment within their own community.

The two informal workshops proved to be confirmatory of stakeholder priorities, while also providing useful insights which were used to augment and fine tune the final plan.

We’d like to thank everyone we worked with at EMHS for the opportunity to engage on such a rewarding project, and particularly Megan Milligan, Colby McGuire and Linda Parsons. Thanks also to the BVPSP LDAG and all the local stakeholders we had the pleasure of meeting on the journey.

Congratulations to everyone involved on the nomination, and more importantly, on the development of the Plan itself.

EMHS Youth Alcohol Action Plan (PDF)

ABC Mornings teen vaping interview

by | Health, News

The Behaviour Change Collaborative was contacted by ABC Mornings for an interview about our Being Gen Vape research following news of increased calls to help lines from teens struggling with vaping. 

The interview with Luke van der Beeke is available in full below.

Eddie Williams interview with Luke van der Beeke (MP3)

by ABC Mornings Pilbara and Kimberley 16 November, 2022

If you’re a parent and keen to know more about our research on teen vaping and what teens think adults need to know you may be interested in our upcoming parent information webinar.

Webinar details:

Event title: Being Gen Vape – What Teens Told Us About Vaping (link to more info)

Date and time: Thursday 8 December, 6pm to 7pm AWST.

Audience: Parents of school-aged children

Cost: $21.00 (includes Humantix booking fee)

*Feature image by Sarah Johnson courtesy Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)