7-YEAR FOLLOW-UP OF A SMOKING-PREVENTION PROGRAM FOR CHILDREN

Smoking-prevention programs, run by both teachers, and teachers and pe ers, have been introduced into school curricula in many pac ts of the world. This paper describes a long-term follow-up of a randomised cont rolled trial of a smoking education program for children conducted in Western Australia. Seven years after the first. survey of 2 366 Year 7 students in 1981, 68 per cent of initial participants were traced thr ough public records; 53 per cent of these responded to a new survey co ncerning smoking. Previous follow-up after one and two years had shown that both teacher-led and peer-led programs continued to reduce the t aking up of smoking by girls to about the same degree, whereas in boys , the teacher-led program appeared to be effective after one year but neither program was effective after two years. In nonsmoking girls, bo th the intervention programs maintained their effects at the seven-yea r follow-up, with an almost 50 per cent reduction in smoking prevalenc e in the intervention group. Nonsmoking girls appeared to respond to c igarette advertisements. Mothers seemed to influence nonsmokers of bot h sexes and brothers seemed to influence smokers of both sexes. The se ven-year follow-up confirmed the results seen at two years for boys, t hat the effects of the education program had dissipated. However, this study suggests that the smoking-prevention program had a lasting effe ct on preventing girls from taking up smoking.