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The "We Card" program is the most ubiquitous tobacco industry "youth smoking prevention" program in the United States, and its retailer materials have been copied in other countries. The program's effectiveness has been questioned, but no previous studies have examined its development, goals, and uses from the tobacco industry's perspective. On the basis of our analysis of tobacco industry documents released under the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement, we concluded that the We Card program was undertaken for 2 primary purposes: to improve the tobacco industry's image and to reduce regulation and the enforcement of existing laws. Policymakers should be cautious about accepting industry self-regulation at face value, both because it redounds to the industry's benefit and because it is ineffective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents research which dealt with the impact of rap music on the health of African American female adolescents. Rap music videos are a media genre that is attracting considerable attention. Level of exposure to rap music videos, the predictor variable was determined by asking adolescents to estimate the number of hours they viewed rap music videos during an average day. Covariates examined included age, employment status, involvement in extracurricular activities, participation in religious events, family composition, and group assignment to either the HIV intervention or the comparison health situation.

This section provides information on models for partnerships between public health and community organizations to increase health services to populations at risk for sexually transmitted diseases (STD). Persons at risk for STD face barriers in gaining access to health services, including limited understanding of the structure of the services, lack of insurance and distrust of providers. The Denver Gonorrhea Community Action Project (GCAP), administered by the Denver Department of Public Health, has formed a partnership with a community organization serving homeless youths that provides limited health services supervised by volunteer physicians. Other partners included a state-funded juvenile detention facility and a county jail, both with in-house nurse practitioners. Meanwhile, the Saint Louis GCAP, administered by the Division of Infectious Diseases of the Washington University School of Medicine, implemented regular screenings at 20 community organizations. In many cases, GCAP staff formed partnerships with local AIDS organizations and the Saint Louis Department of Health to offer ligase chain reaction screening and STD education in addition to HIV screening and educational efforts already ongoing in these sites. Finally, a third model is one in which staff at community organizations and establishments had no clinical skills but were interested in conducting screening and becoming a resource for STD prevention. In Denver, staff at an after-hours club, a place for youth to hang out in a safe environment, were interested in offering regular screenings.

The article reports on a local community project based on tobacco use among youth in Larimer County, Colorado. The Larimer County Tobacco Access and Youth Project makes a collaboration between public health officials, citizen activists, voluntary organizations, and a community coalition helped create new local laws to regulate the sale and use of tobacco products by minors in 3 cities in Larimer County. The project began after the Larimer County Department of Health and Environment discovered that the state law regulating the sale of tobacco to minors was ineffective. A strategy to address this problem was developed and used in the city of Loveland. The successful strategy was subsequently modified to meet the unique needs and characteristics of each of the other 2 cities, Fort Collins and Estes Park. The first step in the process was to identify the city's power structure and mode of operations for passing ordinances and to organize advocates. The second step was to establish a working relationship with the law enforcement establishment. The third step was documenting need for an ordinance to prevent tobacco sales to minors. The impact on the Loveland community has been positive. Compliance checks showed that tobacco sales to minors dropped to 14% shortly after the ordinance was passed and then to 5.8% after 1 year.

The article discusses the provisions on health of school-age children by the American Public Health Association in the U.S. The organization asserted that the basic purpose of school health services is to boost the educational operations by improving the health conditions of children and youth. It also recognizes the need for physical, emotional, psychological and educational growth of individuals aged 3 to 21 years. Among the influential factors include comprehensive school health care providers, parents and community