Ryan Juntti
Updated: November 20, 2019 10:59 PM
On Wednesday night, students in the Public Health program at UMD shared results of a needs assessment they conducted where 54 people answered questions about vaping on campus.
The needs assessment was part of an awareness campaign about vaping called "Nic Free@UMD", which was also a class project. The campaign was designed to prevent or decrease the use of e-cigarettes in the UMD community.
The students in charge of the campaign shared a presentation about vaping and the dangers it presents, as well as how UMD is working to combat the problem.
The students say the recent increase in EVALI (E-cigarette or Vaping Associated Lung Injury) is a big reason they decided to focus on vaping.
"Before everything really started happening in the news, we knew that it was a hot topic, however, then things started to happen. Deaths started to happen, and the EVALI cases started to rise, so it was just a very timely project that we did want to address, and we wanted to help educate the community as to why it is a problem," said Melissa Peirson, a senior in the Public Health program at UMD.
The results of the survey are:
The CDC says in the U.S. there have been over 2,172 cases of EVALI in 49 states, along with 42 deaths in 24 states.
Updated: November 20, 2019 10:59 PM
Created: November 20, 2019 09:42 PM
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