The City of Greater Bendigo, in partnership with Bendigo Community Health Service (BCHS) has launched a series of four short videos to support parents, carers and educators to help young people navigate issues around vaping.
The videos are part of a new initiative called Escape the Vape which aims to increase awareness of the harms of vaping among young people, build young people's capability to reject vaping, upskill local health professionals and provide educational support to parents and educators.
The videos are being launched in time for World No Tobacco Day on May 31.
City of Greater Bendigo Community Partnerships Manager Amy Holmes said a key part of the Escape the Vape project involves delivering a school-based education program to young people aged 10-12 that demystifies vaping and provides young people with a toolkit to say no to vaping.
"The new videos will sit alongside the school-based education program, as a resource for parents and teachers to use to help young people navigate issues around vaping," Ms Holmes said.
"The videos feature parents with lived experience and local health professionals and provide information on the health effects and harms of vaping, how to talk to a young person about vaping and intervention and support strategies.
"It can be very hard for parents and carers of young people aged 10 to 18 to navigate the topic of vaping with young people and the aim of the videos is to provide tools to help them do this. We also recognise that parents lead incredibly busy lives, so each video has been designed to be short, just a few minutes long and easy to watch."
BCHS Senior Leader Integrated Health Promotion Natalia Smith said awareness efforts were making a difference and a video series aimed at supporting parents, carers and educators was essential to reinforce declining youth vaping rates.
"We're excited to support this video resource especially given parents are at the forefront of efforts to encourage young people not just to quit but to not even pick up a vape in the first place," Ms Smith said.
"We believe knowledge is power and have seen first-hand through our Prevention of Vaping program for grade 5 and 6 students that facts are empowering and have an impact when it comes to making healthy, informed decisions.
"This video series is a real asset to parents and educators and will provide them with further support on how to encourage young people to make positive choices when it comes to their health."
