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Intervention and policy issues related to children's exposure to environmental tobacco smoke
K M Emmons1, M Wong, S K Hammond
1Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA. kaaren_emmsons@dfci.harvard.edu
Insights
Reducing children's exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) is critical. Project KISS aims to motivate parents to decrease ETS exposure using feedback, addressing challenges like nicotine dependence and socioeconomic barriers.
Area of Science:
- Public Health
- Pediatrics
- Environmental Health
Background:
- High prevalence of children's exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) in the United States.
- Nearly 40% of US children experience regular ETS exposure.
Purpose of the Study:
- Review literature on interventions to reduce ETS exposure in young children.
- Introduce Project KISS (Keeping Infants Safe from Smoke) intervention.
- Utilize exposure feedback to enhance parental motivation for ETS reduction.
Main Methods:
- Literature review of existing ETS reduction strategies for children.
- Study design for Project KISS, an intervention utilizing exposure feedback.
- Presentation of baseline data for ETS intervention planning.
Main Results:
- Limited studies found targeting ETS reduction in children.
- Project KISS participants recognized smoking's impact on child health.
- Participants showed high motivational readiness to quit but faced barriers like nicotine dependence and socioeconomic factors.
Conclusions:
- Discuss policy implications for reducing childhood ETS exposure.
- Provide recommendations for future research in ETS intervention.
Background:
Children's exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) is unacceptably high; almost 40% of children in the United States are regularly exposed to ETS.
Methods:
This paper presents a review of the literature that evaluates interventions designed to reduce ETS exposure among young children. In addition, it presents the study design for Project KISS (Keeping Infants Safe from Smoke), an intervention designed to utilize exposure-related feedback to increase parents' motivation for ETS reduction and to reduce household ETS levels. Baseline data are presented to illustrate factors that should be addressed in ETS interventions.
Results:
The literature review demonstrates the dearth of studies in the literature targeting ETS reduction among children. Participants in Project KISS believed that smoking had affected their children's health and were in later stages of motivational readiness to quit smoking than is typically observed. However, they face a number of challenges to smoking, such as high prevalence of nicotine dependence, high prevalence of living with other smokers, and socioeconomic and stress-related barriers.
Conclusions:
The policy implications of this research are discussed, and recommendations are made for future research.