Knowledge of Smoking in University to Prevent Students Tobacco Consumption

ABSTRACT BODY:

Introduction: The consumption of tobacco is one of the major public health problems in the countries by the enormous social, economic and health consequences that entails; so that prevention plays an important role as it is proven that the consumption of tobacco is one of the factors contributing to the development of cancer in humans. The aim of the study was to evaluate the outcome of an intervention designed to increase the level of information or knowledge about the consequences of smoking in order to prevent consumption.

Methods: The study was conducted at the Evangelical University of El Salvador in a sample of 300 freshmen. The research was a descriptive and quasi-experimental approach with a pretest and posttest design with no comparison group. They were determined and variable frequency to a 0.05 significance level crossings.

Results: The students gave importance to the issue of tobacco in the pretest was 73.3% and 79.8% in the post, noting that the female showed the highest percentages of such knowledge. The act of smoking was seen by most students as bad with 89.8% in the pretest and posttest 83.1%. Knowledge of diseases caused by the consumption of tobacco, was 65% before induction and 69.8% after, and always associated with some type of cancer of any organ. A 59.5% and 50.8% (pretest and posttest respectively) of the students mentioned they would like to participate in committees on prevention of use of tobacco and other drugs, to help and to make people aware of the damage caused to the body.

Conclusion: Knowledge of new students about smoking and the damage that occurs in the body was high, but not dramatically impacted in the prevention tobacco consumption

Keywords: college freshman, prevention, smoking, El Salvador