Tobacco Prevention Interventions in Adolescents

Tobacco use is a major public health problem in our society. Tobacco addiction begins in adolescence and majority of smokers start using tobacco in the age group between 11-13 years. There are a number of tobacco prevention strategies targeted towards the youth such as school-based educational interventions, community-based interventions, advertising restrictions on tobacco use, youth access restrictions and public health education. The purpose of this article is to review smoking prevention educational interventions in adolescents conducted either in the school or community setting. In order to collect the materials for the study, a search of CINAHL, MEDLINE and ERIC databases was conducted for the time period 1985-2006. A total of 15 studies met the inclusion criteria. Eight out of the 15 interventions were targeted towards students in grades 6-7 which makes sense as majority of the adolescents start using tobacco in the age group 11-13 years. Nine out of 15 interventions reviewed did not use any behavioral theory. The six articles that used theory used social learning theory, community organizing theory, transactional and systems theory of environmental change and some constructs from transtheoretical model. There is need to explicitly reify behavioral theories by tobacco prevention interventions. Characteristics of the length of the intervention, personnel conducting the intervention, types of activities included in the interventions, and process evaluation results are discussed in the article. Recommendations for developing future educational interventions for preventing tobacco use in adolescents are discussed