At an event in the Croke Park Conference Centre this week, Minister Aine Brady, newly appointed Minister of State for Older People and Health Promotion, awarded a first place prize to winning students Emma Horan, Sinead Mangan, and Roisin McEvoy and second place prize to student Khansa Akhtar, all from St Angela’s National School, Castlebar, at the inaugural Irish Cancer Society competition.
This competition was offered to primary schools across the country to design a poster highlighting the positive aspects of being smoke free.
The initiative, which was designed for fifth class students to complement the primary school SPHE (social, personal, and health education ) syllabus, aims to educate young people and provide them with skills to make informed choices which are beneficial to their health. The competition was phenomenally successful with almost 250 schools taking part and more than 1,000 entries. As part of the initiative the Irish Cancer Society also produced a comprehensive smoking prevention pack for each school so that pupils could learn about the impact of smoking and tobacco in a fun and interactive way.
Speaking at the event Minister Brady said: “We know that about half of the young people who smoke had their first cigarette during their primary school years. Therefore, having a focus on primary school children is extremely important in attempting to influence behaviour.”
Commenting on the success of the competition, Norma Cronin, health promotion manager, Irish Cancer Society, added: “We had a fantastic response to the competition and the standard was exceptionally high with pupils displaying outstanding creativity and artistic talent. The posters are proof that very often young people can come up with really creative ideas in illustrating the positive aspect of not smoking, and we are looking forward to using the posters in smoking prevention publicity materials in the future.
“The Irish Cancer Society is delighted to be awarding sports vouchers to the winning schools and we hope that this will help to promote and encourage healthy lifestyle behaviours among the children, which include not smoking, being physically active and maintaining a healthy weight. Research suggests that involvement in physical activity at a young age and throughout the school years may lessen the likelihood of children taking up smoking,” continued Ms Cronin.
According to the Office of Tobacco Control, approximately 50 per cent of young people in Ireland start smoking before the age of 15, with the latest Health Behaviour in School Children report (2006 ) showing that 15.3 per cent of all school children between the ages of 10 and 17 smoke.
Twenty nine per cent of adults living in Ireland smoke. Smoking remains the single biggest risk factor for the development of cancer. Smoking causes 30 per cent of all cancers, including 95 per cent of lung cancers. Half of all smokers will die from tobacco related disease.
If you would like advice, information and support with quitting, you can call the National Smokers’ Quitline (CallSave 1850 201 203, open 8am to 10pm, Monday to Saturday ). The National Smokers’ Quitline is run by the Health Services Executive (HSE ) in partnership with the Irish Cancer Society.
