An Educational Intervention with Adolescents about the Harmful Consequences of Smoking

Abstract

Introduction: Smoking is defined as the chronic intoxication caused by tobacco abuse. It is the first cause of avoidable mortality, one of the most important problems that puts at risk not only the health of the individual smoker, but also that of the people who live daily with them, called passive smokers.

Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of the application of an educational intervention program to modify the level of knowledge about the consequences of smoking, with adolescents belonging to the family medical office 44 of Policlínico René Vallejo Ortiz, of Bayamo.

Methods: A quasiexperimental study was carried out, of the before-after modality and without control group, of an educational intervention in the family clinical office 44 of Policlínico René Vallejo Ortiz, of Bayamo, in the period from September to October 2021. The study universe was composed of 84 adolescents aged 10 to 19 years old, belonging to the office. The sample of 40 was obtained by simple random sampling, taking into account the inclusion criteria.

Results: Before applying the educational intervention, 21 adolescents had a low knowledge about the consequences of smoking (52.5 %); after applying the educational intervention, 37 adolescents showed a high knowledge about this topic (92.5 %).

Conclusions: An educational intervention program with adolescents on the consequences of smoking was implemented and proved effective, since it achieved high levels of knowledge in most of them after the intervention was applied.