Youth and Vaping Virtual Forum
LAH hosted a virtual forum, Youth and Vaping: Understanding and coordinating pathways for stopping or not starting, on February 26. This project, funded by the Vancouver Physician Staff Association, was led by Dr. Milan Khara, Physician Lead at the VGH Smoking Cessation Clinic, and LAH Director Dr. Chris Carlsten. In response to the rapidly growing popularity of vaping among youth and a lack of awareness among youth about vaping resources, we wanted to understand what services were available for youth in the Vancouver area and find ways to improve the network of services through increased collaboration and communication.
The virtual forum brought together nearly 50 stakeholders, including youth, educators, health care providers, policy makers, community organizations, and researchers to share knowledge, highlight challenges to youth awareness about vaping and available resources, and identify ways to work better together to support youth around vaping issues. Participants at the forum were passionate and motivated to improve youth awareness about vaping. Leading up to the forum, we conducted an environmental scan of available services and resources and worked with a group of youth partners to create graphic tools to facilitate pathways to access vaping supports. Our learnings will serve to inform and motivate future research aiming to understand and address the challenges of youth vaping.
The Youth Vaping Support Pathways infographics are available to view and download.
The forum summary report can be downloaded here.
For questions about this project, please contact Karen.rideout@VCH.ca.