HealthQuest

HealthQuest is a challenge-based, educational approach in which children learn about preventive health behaviors by solving problems. Students act as social scientists --they ask questions, investigate, and develop their own interventions. Through HealthQuest, students become involved in authentic work which will result in a product that has value to their community. The HealthQuest program is being supported by the Koop Institute while it is in its implementation phase.

In 1995, the National Cancer Institute funded Dartmouth Medical School to implement HealthQuest, a four year pilot program involving two rural Vermont K-12 schools. In an effort to reduce tobacco use, students will design their own tobacco prevention interventions by solving age-appropriate problems. Students will deliver anti-tobacco messages to their peers through school presentations and at a year-end tournament. If this pilot is successful, investigators hope to make HealthQuest a nationwide program.

Why Tobacco Prevention?
Every day more than 3,000 adolescents smoke their first cigarette. Of these children, 23 will be murdered, 30 will die in traffic accidents, and 750 will be killed by smoking-related disease. Tobacco use is the biggest preventable cause of premature death in the United States. Tobacco-related mortality and morbidity cost 65 billion dollars per year. Children in rural communities have the highest rates of tobacco use--about 30% of graduating seniors in average Vermont schools are regular smokers.

Participating Schools
Interventions will be implemented in the Chelsea School, Chelsea, VT, and the Bethel Elementary and Whitcomb Junior, Senior High School in Bethel, VT. Nearly 800 rural school children and their teachers are expected to participate. The Blue Mountain Union School in Wells River, VT, will be the control school. In the third year, HealthQuest will be implemented in two rural schools in North Carolina.