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From November 1999 through July 2004, staff at North Carolina's Department of Health and Human Services advanced its tobacco use prevention and control mission by establishing three youth-led tobacco use prevention centers across the state. The centers, named Question Why (?Y) provided a platform for project staff to foster youth-led tobacco use prevention planning and advocacy and to provide leadership development to participating youth. The centers were established in Wilmington, Durham and Asheville. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) provided in support of this project.
Youths at these regional centers worked with adult volunteers (often collaborating, too, with statewide or community stakeholders such as school or law enforcement staffs) to plan and carry out a varied program of tobacco use prevention, targeting the social environment of adolescents. Paid staff at each center included a full-time project coordinator and five or six trained teen advocates working at least three afternoons a week.
The project's three youth centers continue to operate in partnership with Tobacco Prevention and Control Branch and other agencies. Following the grant period, Question Why opened a fourth office in the Charlotte, N.C., area in 2004, operated by the Durham Area Corp.
The North Carolina Health and Wellness Trust Fund supports adult staff and stipend-funded youth staff at each center, which now focus on providing training and technical assistance to other HWTF grantee organizations and all counties throughout the state engaged in teen tobacco use prevention.
The project's website, Question Why, describes the project, lists contact and events information, provides facts, data and policies on tobacco use in North Carolina, as well as the full text of the project's youth empowerment model, Question Why Guide to Youth Empowerment for Tobacco Control.
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