Siteman Recognizes Students Who Live Tobacco Free
Windsor Middle School winning T-shirt design
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Almost one in five Missouri high school students smokes cigarettes, a deadly addiction that lowers individual life expectancy by years and costs the state billions of dollars annually.
To reach children before their first puff, the Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine sponsors Keep Kids Tobacco Free, an essay and T-shirt design contest held at local middle schools.
This year, students at Windsor Middle School in Imperial, Mo., and Jefferson Intermediate
School in St. Charles, Mo., submitted either a T-shirt design or an essay encouraging young people to live smoke free. At both schools, the first-place winner in each category received a $100 gift certificate to an area shopping mall. Second- and third-place winners each received a $50 gift certificate. In addition, the winning design at each school was turned into T-shirts that were distributed to all participating students.
To read the winning essays, click on the links below:
Jefferson Intermediate School winning T-shirt design
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"Missouri's high school smoking rate is higher than the national average and worse than 36 other states," says Siteman director Timothy Eberlein, MD, citing statistics from the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. "Our children deserve better, and Keep Kids Tobacco Free is a great way to help students understand the dangers of tobacco before they pick up the habit."
The essay and T-shirt contests are meant to reinforce the anti-tobacco message middle schoolers might not have heard since
elementary school.