Community
28 May, 2025
VicHealth delivers anti-vaping seminars to C’mite schools
SCHOOL students across Corangamite Shire engaged with Barwon South West region’s vaping prevention project last week, attending seminars to learn more about the dangers of vaping and increase awareness.
Timboon and District Healthcare Service (TDHS) were a part of the team running the sessions across seven schools, getting through 17 sessions across the week, mostly with Year 7-10 students.
The project visited Timboon P12, Hampden P12, Cobden Technical School, Camperdown College, Mercy Regional College, Terang College and Derrinallum P12 College.
TDHS health promotion officer Christie Berry said the project came together thanks to grant money from VicHealth.
“They wanted to address vaping as it’s obviously come up in their latest research as an issue in young people,” she said.
“There was grant money available where we all had to apply and the City of Greater Geelong received $200,000.
“The supporting shires around Barwon South West who put in letters of support all got $20,000 each.
“VicHealth had a system mapping day and people from all over Victoria wanted our ideas on how they can attack vaping and address vaping prevention.
“As a shire we had to come up with ideas on how to go about that, and we found it was overwhelmingly that school kids needed education around vaping.”
Park Bench Solutions consultant Leigh Bartlett conducted the presentations as a part of the vaping prevention project for the Barwon South West region.
“One factor is education, but another is some co-design in actually asking young people,” she said.
“For example, their recall on health messaging is very different to the last generation yet we’re still using those tools.
“It’s about getting young people to lead the conversation on what’s best for them and how we can best get to them.
“I suppose one of the things that happens, because research is such a slow-moving beast, is by the time we’re talking about vaping and we’ve got the research and the evidence, young people have moved on to other nicotine-based factors.”
Ms Berry said a big part of the project was ensuring they were involving young people in the design of their own education.
“They want us to involve the youth and get their voice so it’s not just what we want to hear,” she said.
“It’s what the youth want to say about vaping and how they would go about prevention in the future.
“Then they can come up with campaigns or designs on how to address vaping or nicotine, or all the new products.”