Study shows school-based tobacco control program can lower youth smoking rates

A new study provides the latest evidence that school-based tobacco control programs can have a positive effect in lowering tobacco use among youth. The study was an evaluation of Salaam Bombay Foundation’s (SBF) life-skills tobacco control project for youth of low socioeconomic status in Mumbai, India, and neighboring parts of Maharashtra.

Researchers at Harvard School of Public Health and Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Mass., and Healis Seksharia Institute for Public Health, Mumbai, found that students in SBF project schools were half as likely to use tobacco as students from schools not enrolled in the program. The study appeared online on April 16, 2012, in the journal PLoS One. The findings from this study are strongly supported by the findings of the 31^st US Surgeon General Report which concluded that coordinated, multi-component interventions that include mass media campaigns, community programs and school-based policies are effective in “preventing onset and use of tobacco use among youth and young adults.”