Initial situation

Swiss Olympic's «cool and clean» prevention program is part of the Tobacco Prevention Fund's (TPF) Children and Youth Program (KJP). It supports coaches in promoting the life skills of young people. The cool and clean code of conduct, to which the leaders commit together with the young people, includes the commitment «I abstain from tobacco».

So far, however, the activities of cool and clean have not addressed the individual realities of juniors. As a result, the previous nicotine prevention measures may have missed the individual needs of the juniors and were therefore less effective or even rejected. On behalf of the TPF, the ZHAW Department of Health has already identified five segments of young people with regard to tobacco prevention (REACH project - Target group profiles in tobacco prevention).

The current online survey (sports: football, volleyball, basketball, university field hockey, ice hockey and gymnastics) should now provide information on how juniors can be specifically addressed based on their motives.

Objectives and measures

The findings from the data analysis form the basis for three measures:

1. Training videos for coaches to provide guidance on how the segments are distributed in their sport, on what observable characteristics and behaviors they can assign young people to a segment, and what arguments and messages they can use to address young people with regard to tobacco prevention.
2. A social media campaign by cool and clean aimed directly at young people. Targeting can be used to display both sport-specific and segment-specific messages. Young people can be motivated to give up nicotine permanently in the sense of a call-to-action and events can be promoted.
3. Touchpoints in sports clubs and/or sports facilities that use suitable messages to highlight the protective and risk factors specific to the sport and promote abstinence from nicotine.

Method and procedure

The existing REACH data is analyzed with regard to criteria such as the number of young people, tobacco prevalence, gender and vulnerability of young people, and the sports of football, volleyball, basketball, university field hockey, ice hockey and gymnastics are defined.

An online survey (in German, French and Italian) will then be developed, with the young people being motivated to take part in the online survey via the coaches. In addition to the segment classification, the survey is also intended to collect environmental information regarding smoking behavior (in a private and sporting context), taking into account the COM-B model. Although the focus is on tobacco prevention, the online survey should also take into account the other commitments of cool and clean and the problem of older young people quitting sport more frequently.

A short questionnaire will also be developed for the trainers to motivate the young people to take part in the survey. This will allow information to be obtained regarding the representativeness of the survey. A mailing to Y+S coaches and suitable documents for forwarding in the team chat support the activation of clubs and coaches. Possible selection effects on the part of both the leaders and the young people are also taken into account and reduced as much as possible through suitable measures. This also includes incentivizing participants.

Results

The three measures training videos for coaches, the cool and clean social media campaign aimed directly at young people and the touchpoints in the sports clubs will be implemented from summer 2025 onwards based on the recommendations from the cool and clean data analysis.

Project organization

• Project management
  Prof. Dr. Frank Wieber
  Prof. Dr. Steffen Müller
• Project team
  Dr. Jesse Bächler
  Dr. Nina Heim
  Christian Ingold
• Client
  The project was commissioned by cool and clean, Swiss Olympics and the Tobacco Prevention Fundn.
• Project duration
  01.11.2023 - 31.12.2024

Research project REACH - Target group profiles in tobacco prevention

This sub-project is part of the reference project REACH - Target group profiles in tobacco prevention

Further information