CURRENTS EDUCATION & ENGAGEMENT
RESEARCH & CLINICAL CURRENTS
APPOINTMENTS & ACCOLADES
Teen Vaping
W
ithin just months of its initial recognition in the summer of 2019, more than 2,700 cases (including 60 deaths) of E-cigarette or vaping product use-associated lung injury (EVALI) had already been reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And nearly 80 percent of the patients were under the age of 35. “The surge in youth vaping is alarming,” says Jamie Garfield, MD, Associate Professor of Thoracic Medicine and Surgery at Temple. Between 2017 and 2019, the percentage of high school students who reported using E-cigarettes more than doubled (from 11.7 to 27.5 percent). And it more than tripled among middle school students (from 3.3 to 10.5 percent). At the request of the Pennsylvania Department of Health, Garfield, who is also a spokesperson for the American Lung Association, developed a vaping education outreach program for Philadelphia-area schools — and recruited Temple medical student volunteers to help. “Medical students are excellent ambassadors to deliver this message since they are closer in age to our audience,” Garfield says. “A lot can be lost when information is presented to teens by older authority figures.”
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| TEMPLE HEALTH MAGAZINE | WINTER 2021
Photograph by CLINT BLOWERS
