Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. This part of the book demonstrates the need for a strategic integration of school and community health promotion efforts to attain community input for the design of school health education programmes, to acquire community support for the implementation and maintenance of health education programmes in schools, and to achieve health related behavioural impacts. It proposes an interventionist strategy, presently being researched, designed to prevent or postpone regular smoking. The research project’s approach to intervention highlights intervention experiences based on real life dilemmas which emphasize confronting the subject with choices to encourage a self-analysis of decision-making processes; interventions which focus on problems of power, affiliation and social interaction concerns of adolescents rather than merely on the act of smoking. The book concerns itself with decision-making dilemmas and their resolution which are experienced by young people, particularly in respect of smoking.