BACKGROUND AND IMPLEMENTATION CHALLENGES: According to Global Youth Tobacco Survey for India, 8.4% adolescents in the age group of 13-15 years used some form of tobacco. More than 20% of them wanted to quit their habit. To address this burden, it is important to design and implement evidence-based behavioural tobacco cessation interventions targeted to this specific population. Schools are considered to be an opportunistic setting to offer cessation support to the students but there are limited school-based behavioural cessation interventions, especially for smokeless tobacco.
INTERVENTION OR RESPONSE: LifeFirst, an in-school tobacco cessation program, was implemented over two years in 170 municipal schools of Mumbai. All the students of 7^th-9^th grades attended orientation sessions about harmful effects of tobacco (including e-cigarettes, hookah and smokeless tobacco products). Students were informed about the availability of a cessation service and encouraged to register voluntarily for theme-based group sessions conducted over six months. Three structured activity-based sessions were conducted with the registered students to understand their triggers, develop coping mechanisms and refusal skills. Tobacco use status was recorded in each session.
RESULTS AND IMPACT: 13349 students attended the orientation sessions. Overall prevalence of tobacco use was 6%; higher among boys (9%) than girls (2%). 780 current tobacco users registered for the cessation programme. Among them, 701(90%) were smokers, 69 (9%) used smokeless tobacco and remaining 10 were dual users. The most commonly used smoking and smokeless products were hookah (28%) and gutkha (6%) respectively. At the end of three sessions, 504 (65%) registered students self-reported not using tobacco. The abstinence was slightly higher among the boys (65%) compared to the girls (63%).
CONCLUSIONS: Tobacco use is prevalent among school going children and cessation support is required. In-school activity-based group tobacco cessation programme is feasible and effective to support the adolescents to quit their tobacco use.