Hookah is the enemy of health campaign: A campaign for prevention of hookah smoking among youth

Hookah smoking is now a serious health threat especially for adolescents. Implementation of planned interventions can help reduce hookah smoking. This study was conducted to investigate the effect of a campaign Hookah is the Enemy of Health Campaign (HEHC) based on the protection motivation theory to prevent hookah smoking among the youth in Sirjan city, in 2018. This was a pre-and post-intervention study. Participants were 280 male and female youth who were selected randomly through the health centers of Sirjan. The educational campaign was conducted during 3 months and participants were trained through interpersonal, group, organizational and community channels and mass media. Data were collected by filling out a questionnaire (containing 64 questions) by the participant before the intervention and 3 months after. Data were analyzed by descriptive statistics (frequency and percentage), chi-square and Wilcoxon signed-rank test by SPSS20 software. The prevalence of hookah smoking was 44.3 in the target group. There was a significant change in the mean scores of knowledge and perceived susceptibility, perceived severity, response efficiency, self-efficacy, rewards, fear and protection motivation after the HEHC (p 0.05). Also, the prevalence of hookah smoking among the target group for those who had ever consumed decreased from 8.9 to 4 and for those who used it occasionally decreased from 35 to 19.4. The HEHC was effective in reducing hookah smoking, raising knowledge and improving the constructs of the protection motivation theory among the youth of Sirjan. © 2019 The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com