Background: The Smarter than Smoking (STS) Project was established in 1995 as a multi-strategy intervention to reduce smoking among 10 to 15-year-olds in Western Australia (WA). Based at the National Heart Foundation, STS is implemented by a partnership of major health agencies, and is funded by the Western Australian Health Promotion Foundation (Healthway). This paper describes STS's key strategies and results over a 12 year period from 1995 to 2007.

Strategy: STS employs a comprehensive strategy mix to communicate with young people, including mass media, the Internet, sponsorship, school initiatives, youth publications and advocacy.

Comprehensive evaluation includes a combination of formative research, and baseline and annual tracking surveys to examine changes in smoking prevalence, campaign awareness and attitudes towards campaign messages among the target group.

Results will be presented indicating positive shifts over time in smoking related attitudes, intentions and behaviour. There was an increase in the proportion of respondents who reported never smoking, increasing from 40% in 1996 to 63% in 2006. There was also a significant decrease in the percentage of 14-15 year olds who smoked, down from 28% for 14 year olds and 43% for 15 year olds in 1996 to 10% and 13% respectively in 2006.

Conclusion: Youth smoking prevention interventions that are as sustained, comprehensive, collaborative, well resourced and evaluated as STS are rare in the literature. The results provide evidence for STS achieving such positive shifts in awareness, attitudes, intentions and behaviour, and reinforce the legitimacy of youth interventions within broader tobacco control efforts.