Vaping and COVID-19: What CATCH My Breath is Doing Right Now

A LETTER FROM OUR FOUNDING BOARD MEMBER, Dr. Steven Kelder
Dear CATCH Friends and Community,

I hope this note finds you well and healthy during these unprecedented times.

At CATCH Global Foundation (CGF), we are following the COVID-19 updates closely and working diligently to keep CATCH My Breath, our evidence-based nicotine vaping prevention resources, accessible to youth and educators, particularly in light of  the recent attention on vaping and the increased risk of severe respiratory complications from COVID-19.

We are also working to expand our existing CATCH My Breath resources to include information on the links between vaping and infectious diseases, like COVID-19, as we know well the health impacts of vaping and how behaviors like sharing vaping devices are known to contribute to the spread of disease.

To address this timely topic, we plan to develop a new addendum to the CATCH My Breath Program called, “Vaping & Infectious Disease: Making a Bad Situation Worse”.

The addendum will include multimedia resources and a pre-packaged presentation on vaping and disease prevention that will be accessible to youth, educators, and parents, and it will be offered for free alongside the existing CATCH My Breath program, which is available now at www.catchmybreath.org.

As a nonprofit organization, CGF relies on the support of our generous sponsors to be able to provide CATCH My Breath for free, and we know that this support has a huge impact on the prevalence of youth vaping.

To date, we have reached more than 1 million youth in over 2,700 schools with the CATCH My Breath program. Based on research published this year, we now know that completing the program reduces the risk for using e-cigarettes by half.

We could have never reached this milestone without the support of our partners and donors, and we look forward to continuing to work with our donors to reach the next million youth with vaping and disease prevention curriculum.

Currently, CGF is seeking partners to help us bring this timely and needed new content on vaping and disease prevention to the public.

If you are interested in learning more about the opportunity to work together on this as a lead sponsor or if you know someone who might be, please send us an email today.

If you would like to support this initiative as a donor, we invite you to make a contribution online. Every little bit helps.

Donate Here

Thank you for being part of our community. We know that we will get through this difficult time together, and we wish you all good health and safety.

Sincerely,

Dr. Steven H. Kelder, PhD, MPH
Board Member, CATCH Global Foundation
Distinguished Professor in the UT School of Public Health Department of Epidemiology, Human Genetics, and Environmental Sciences

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