Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Evidence Brief
What is LML?
Guided by the ministrys Comprehensive Tobacco Control Guidance Document (Comprehensive Tobacco
Control Working Group, 2010), Love My LifeTobacco Free! (LML) is a comprehensive health
promotion approach to tobacco prevention among children, youth and young adults that fosters
community partnerships and youth engagement to enhance supportive social and physical
environments and influence policies which support healthy living for the mind, body and spirit.
Supportive environments are important and a worthy focus. The US Surgeon Generals Report suggests
the teen brain is particularly susceptible to social and [physical] environmental influences to use
tobacco (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2012, p.460).
LML is about normalizing tobacco free living through youth voices. By tapping into their strengths and
interests, LML is able to link opportunities, educate on tobacco and facilitate health promotion. LML is
an opportunity to tackle multiple tobacco contexts by addressing the challenges it poses to both physical
and social environments. It also brings on a cultural conversation with youth about the connection
between mental health and healthy lifestyles.
The LML campaign gives youth the freedom of creative self-expression to deliver authentic messaging in
the promotion of tobacco free social and physical environments. LML meaningfully engages youth of
varying social identities in expressing their personal stories to reshape knowledge into something
meaningful.
Participating youth move through grassroots projects as a full-circle experience. It is platform for them
to artistically or otherwise creatively express themselves freely and openly as informed critical thinkers.
Their revelations have the power to transform their surroundings into supportive environments which in
turn leads back to the ultimate form of positive self expression: healthy behaviours.
Strategic partnerships and collaborations make this an effective and sustainable health promotion
strategy with whole-community impact.
Prepared by Jenna Chisholm, Youth Engagement Coordinator, Eastern Ontario Health Unit
2015-09-01
Love My LifeTobacco Free! is a regional project of the East Tobacco Control Area Network
LMLs tailored messaging, via the youth voice, recognizes that youth within different contexts and
subcultures have different patterns of tobacco use and reasons for them (Colgan, Turnbull, MikockaWalus, & Delfabbro, 2010). Engaging youth in sharing their educated beliefs is a form of social
marketing, effective in behaviour change (Turning Point Social Marketing National Excellence
Collaborative, n.d.). Thomas, McLellan, and Perera (2015) found that combined social competence and
social influence interventions achieve best results in tobacco prevention. This supports growing LMLs
progressive platform to meaningfully engage youth.
LMLs
Implementation
Prepared by Jenna Chisholm, Youth Engagement Coordinator, Eastern Ontario Health Unit
2015-09-01
Love My LifeTobacco Free! is a regional project of the East Tobacco Control Area Network
different components of a given program can
be modified to achieve acceptability.
LMLs is based on Empowerment Theory (Perkins & Zimmerman, 1995) by which people gain a sense of
themselves and influence others. LML applies this theory at the individual, organizational, community,
societal and cultural levels. LML acknowledges that this theory may limit the extent of evaluation and
standardized outcome measures. Adapting Perkins and Zimmermans (1995) Empowerment Theory
assumptions to LML would mean that:
1. The issue of tobacco among youth is best addressed by youth.
2. Youth possess valuable knowledge about their own needs.
3. Youth have strengths to be built on.
4. Youth will come out of the process as critical thinkers.
LML is also guided by the social development model (Hawkins & Weis, 1985) which suggests that by
developing a sense of belonging and connectedness through youth engagement in positive self
expression, youth are more likely to behave according to tobacco free living norms and beliefs. Further
support to social approaches is shown in a review by Seo and Huang (2012) who found that smoking
behaviours likely decrease by strengthening peer networks and connectedness.
Prepared by Jenna Chisholm, Youth Engagement Coordinator, Eastern Ontario Health Unit
2015-09-01
Love My LifeTobacco Free! is a regional project of the East Tobacco Control Area Network
2015-09-01
Love My LifeTobacco Free! is a regional project of the East Tobacco Control Area Network
Is LML Sustainable?
LML follows the 5 categories of influences identified by Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
Provincial System Support Program (2015) in their Evidence Brief on Understanding Change: What Does
the Evidence Say About Sustainability.
LMLs Implementation
1. Effective interventions
2. External context
3. Internal contexts
Prepared by Jenna Chisholm, Youth Engagement Coordinator, Eastern Ontario Health Unit
2015-09-01
Love My LifeTobacco Free! is a regional project of the East Tobacco Control Area Network
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Prepared by Jenna Chisholm, Youth Engagement Coordinator, Eastern Ontario Health Unit
2015-09-01
Love My LifeTobacco Free! is a regional project of the East Tobacco Control Area Network
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Prepared by Jenna Chisholm, Youth Engagement Coordinator, Eastern Ontario Health Unit
2015-09-01
Love My LifeTobacco Free! is a regional project of the East Tobacco Control Area Network
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Prepared by Jenna Chisholm, Youth Engagement Coordinator, Eastern Ontario Health Unit
2015-09-01
Love My LifeTobacco Free! is a regional project of the East Tobacco Control Area Network
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Prepared by Jenna Chisholm, Youth Engagement Coordinator, Eastern Ontario Health Unit
2015-09-01
Love My LifeTobacco Free! is a regional project of the East Tobacco Control Area Network
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Prepared by Jenna Chisholm, Youth Engagement Coordinator, Eastern Ontario Health Unit
2015-09-01