CATCH My Breath teaches youth to resist pressures to use e-cigarettes

$10,000 donation will go toward expanding the reach of the evidence-based CATCH My Breath program to students in grades 5-12 across Massachusetts.

BOSTON, USA, November 16, 2020 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Delta Dental of Massachusetts today announced a $10,000 donation to CATCH My Breath, the evidence-based and peer-reviewed youth nicotine vaping prevention program.

The contribution will go directly toward expanding the reach of the CATCH My Breath program to students in grades 5-12 across Massachusetts.

“Vaping is extremely harmful to the lung health of young people, and it has been shown to increase the likelihood that they will try smoking, setting them up for a lifelong addiction that puts them at greater risk for heart disease and cancer and severely impacts their oral health by causing dental decay and gum disease,” said Dennis Leonard, CEO of Delta Dental of Massachusetts.

“We know that educating youth and empowering them with the refusal skills needed to resist marketing and peer pressures to vape is a key to reducing the number of young people harmed by e-cigarettes.”

Delta Dental’s donation will support the provision of CATCH My Breath middle school video lessons to 200 schools across the state, provide program implementation training to educators at 40 schools, and provide train-the-trainer modules to six Massachusetts educators, enabling them to train other peers on best practices for implementation.

The CATCH My Breath program, offered through CATCH Global Foundation, currently reaches more than 1 million youth in the U.S. annually. Recent studies show that youth who complete the program are 45% less likely to experiment with vaping than youth who do not.

“CATCH has been at the forefront of the vaping prevention movement for the past four years,”said Duncan Van Dusen, CEO of CATCH Global Foundation. “Unfortunately, we continue to see youth adopt the habit of vaping at alarming rates With generous partners like Delta Dental of Massachusetts, we can change this tide. We know that youth who complete our program are more likely to make the right decisions about vaping.”

Delta Dental’s donation will support the expansion of CATCH My Breath in Massachusetts during the 2020-2021 school year.

To learn more about how Massachusetts schools can get involved, please contact catchmybreath@catch.org

To learn more about Delta Dental of Massachusetts, please visit https://deltadentalma.com/

To learn more about CATCH My Breath, visit www.catchmybreath.org

Brooks Ballard
CATCH Global Foundation
+1 512-294-8666
brooks@catch.org
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