Evaluation of a School-based Smoking Prevention and Cessation Programme in Negeri Sembilan

University of Malaya

Status: Completed

Conditions: Smoking

Treatments: Behavioral: School-based smoking prevention and cessation program (The KOTAK program)

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT04378725

DFC01811/0080(P)

Details and patient eligibility

About

School-based smoking cessation programmes stretched longer than a year had 12% reduction in preventing smoking uptake. With regards to smoking intervention programme among adolescents, there is a lack of evidences regarding its long-term effectiveness. This was due to lack of clear guidelines, methodological issues and the fact that adolescents were likely to be sporadic or non-daily smoker, leading to discrepancies in their self-reported claim. Adolescent's smoking relapse rate was at 47% while those who never smoke have a 13% chance to become smoker. Light and regular smokers have 30% and 75% chance becoming an adult smoker respectively. A review paper in smoking research in Malaysia showed that the provision of anti-smoking education in school was associated with reduced susceptibility in female smoking.Male students perceived printable media, radio and the Internet as effective in delivering anti-smoking messages.School-based smoking cessation programme has been shown to be cost-effective in helping the students to quit smoking both in developed and developing countries.For this reason, it is essential to explore what are the factors that amplify the success rate of smoking cessation effect of the KOTAK programme.

Full description

Through this study the investigators will seek to answer the following questions:

• To determine the quit-smoking rate of the KOTAK programme
• To determine the factors associated with quitting smoking with the KOTAK programme

Important aspects of the KOTAK programme evaluation will involve assessing its impacts on preventing smoking initiation and promoting smoking cessation among the adolescents. This form of assessment is vital in achieving the KOTAK's objectives to reduce the prevalence of smokers in Malaysian schools. An average of 8 hours of training were required for dental officers and dental nurses to deliver the modules in the KOTAK programme. This programme has an important financial implication as it involved almost 4 thousand dental officers and 3 thousand dental nurses to screen almost 4.6 million Malaysian schoolchildren in 2018.

Factors yielding promising results for adolescents to quit smoking are important to be researched. This will provide us with valuable insights from the perspectives of the stakeholders pertaining on areas that needed improvement. Despite the existence of various tobacco-prevention program in public schools, KOTAK is deemed significant as it is a yearly collaboration of School Dental Services with the schools. This study will compare the quit smoking rate between Intervention (with KOTAK Programme) and Control (without KOTAK programme ) schools. The sampling unit was the school.

Enrollment: 349 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 13 to 17 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

Smoker, medically fit and consented (parental) students enrolled in;

1. Public funded school
2. Daily school
3. Non- same gendered schools (co-ed )
4. Multiracial school

Exclusion criteria

Students who were a smoker enrolled in;

1. Private schools
2. Boarding school
3. Same-gendered school
4. Vernacular schools

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

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349 participants in 2 patient groups

Control School

No Intervention group

Description:

When a student is screened as a smoker. The student will only be receiving Brief Intervention Advice from the dentist. Brief Intervention advice: delivered to all schoolchildren regardless of smoking status by the dentist. Brief information of dangers of smoking was embedded in the generic lecture of Dental Health Education given to the whole school in large group.

Intervention School

Experimental group

Description:

The Intervention schools: Screened smokers were given Advanced Intervention sessions. After discussion with the State's oral health deputy director and district's programme coordinator, for the purpose of this study, the interval of the Advance Intervention session was decided at 1-month interval.

Treatment:

Behavioral: School-based smoking prevention and cessation program (The KOTAK program)