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. 2022 Aug 30:29:101964.
doi: 10.1016/j.pmedr.2022.101964. eCollection 2022 Oct.

Smoking prevention intervention with school classes in university hospital by thoracic surgeon und pulmonologist. The Zurich prevention project

K Furrer  1 , M M Schuurmans  2 , M Hebeisen  3 , S Schulte  1 , D Schneiter  1 , W Weder  1 , I Opitz  1 , S Hillinger  1
Affiliations

Smoking prevention intervention with school classes in university hospital by thoracic surgeon und pulmonologist. The Zurich prevention project

K Furrer et al. Prev Med Rep. .

Abstract

Smoking prevention in schoolchildren to inform and prevent smoking initiation has been widely studied; however, the potential effect of interventions provided in a hospital setting is unknown. An intervention program named "Schoolchildren smoking prevention in the hospital" was developed in which the health aspects of smoking and its individual consequences were presented in an interactive informational event provided by a thoracic surgeon and a pulmonologist. We aimed to assess the feasibility and the short-term effect of smoking-related knowledge improvement in schoolchildren in a hospital setting. Scholars of 45 classes in Canton of Zurich in Switzerland filled in an anonymous 5-item questionnaire with questions on general knowledge about smoking. The answers were evaluated in this prospective observational cohort study. The primary endpoint was to compare the knowledge improvement by interpretation of answers before-and-after the smoking prevention intervention. Additionally, the performance of children was compared after setting up an overall score and specific subgroups according to gender and school-level. Between Jan 2010, and Oct 2019, schoolchildren aged 10 to 16 years participated in this intervention program and completed the questionnaire before (N = 1270) and after (N = 1264) the intervention. The amount of correctly answered questions increased from 40% (±20) before to 81% (±17), p < 0·0001 after the educational session. An intervention program on health effects of smoking provided by lung specialists in the hospital is feasible, well received, leads to a substantial increase of knowledge, and hopefully can be further explored in the development of smoking prevention programs for schoolchildren.

Keywords: Adolescent; BASEC, Business Administration System for Ethics Committees; CI, Confidence interval; IQR, Interquartile range; OR, Odds radio; RCT, Randomized control trial; SD, Standard deviation; Schoolchildren; Smoking adverse effects; Smoking cessation interventions; Tobacco smoking prevention; i.e, Id est.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Number of selected question 1 items are plotted before and after the educational session as an overlay of two histograms and in boxplots. The correct answer is to select all 7 items. Total population N = 1270/1264.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Overall score of correct answers is plotted before and after the educational session as an overlay of two histograms and in boxplots.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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