[Health behavior in Hualien city high school students]

Chronic diseases and motor vehicle-related injuries are currently the major causes of death in Taiwan. Smoking, alcohol use and inappropriate driving behavior are important risk factors. Most health behavior develop during adolescence. Smoking and alcohol use always serve as "gateways" for other adverse health behavior. In this study, 1195 high school students from 27 classes were selected by a random systematic cluster sampling method, and a structured self-administered questionnaire was used to investigate their prevalent health behavior. The prevalence of current smoking was 9.9%, alcohol 18.7% and betel-nut chewing 5.4% among the academic high school students, whereas the prevalence among vocational school students was smoking 20.5%, alcohol 26.6% and betel-nut chewing 13.9%. Seventeen percent of vocational students reported that they often rode motorcycles after alcohol consumption. An aggregation of adverse health behavior, such as smoking, alcohol consumption and chewing betel-nuts was commonly observed. Designing comprehensive intervention programs to prevent and modify high school students adverse health behavior is an important task for school health-officials.