Abstract
Objectives： Smoking, especially among youth, has been increasing in Korea. This study was performed to evaluate the effects of a newly developing well-designed packaged smoking prevention program (PSPP) for middle school students and to propose further ideas about the program. Methods： The subjects were middle school students enrolled in one Busan city middle school. The effects of the PSPP were evaluated through intervention and follow-up. The PSPP was executed for 10 hours during the semester of middle school freshmen by the author as a position of health teacher, from 1999. After PSPP, cognitions and experiences about smoking were assessed annually from February, 2000 to 2002 by questionnaire. The responses of the educated group and the non-educated group (enrolled in the school at 1998) were compared through chi-square test and odds ratio (OR) and 95％ confidence interval (CI) using SPSS program (ver 10.0). Results： In the three years' follow-up study on the students enrolled in 1999, the proportion of habitual smoking increased significantly (p＜0.001); freshmen 0.2％, sophmore 1.7％, junior 5.0％. However, these level were lower than the results of national study； freshmen 1.1 ％, sophmorer 6.3％, junior 8.5％. Also, the risk of smoking based on the response of 'smoking is hazardous to my health' increased by higher grading. In the comparison of educated and non-educated group, the proportion of the habitual smoking was significantly lower in the educated group(5.0％) than in the non-educated group(13.5％) (OR [95％CI]＝0.33 [0.20∼0.57]). The response rate of 'smoking is hazardous to my health' was higher (OR [95％CI]＝4.42 [2.52∼7.77]), and that of 'maybe smoking in the future' was lower (OR [95％CI]＝0.43 [0.31∼0.59]) in the educated group than in the non-educated group. Conclusions： Though there is not enough information and it was a relatively short evaluation period, this PSPP is considered to be effective in smoking prevention in middle school students. Interests and continuity would be emphasized for the success of smoking prevention programs for younger subjects.
