Smoking Habits and Workplace Health Promotion among University Students in Southern Italy: A Cross-Sectional Pilot Investigation

Abstract

The study aimed to investigate the tobacco smoking prevalence, habits and awareness among a cohort of healthcare students from a university hospital in southern Italy and the associations with socio-demographic determinants. A secondary outcome was to estimate the educational needs to receive information on smoking-related risk factors. Five hundred and forty-nine students completed a self-administered questionnaire (180 male and 369 female, average age 25 yo, ±5.9 SD), enrolled from October 2018 to November 2019 at the University of Naples ‘Luigi Vanvitelli’, and the collected data were analysed by descriptive and inferential statistical analysis. The sample’s prevalence of current smokers was 25.3%, without a significant sex difference. The multiple logistic regression model showed the link between smoking habits and alcoholic beverage consumption (p < 0.001) and living with smokers (p = 0.003). The enrolled cohort does not seem to need more information about the risks of cigarette smoking (p = 0.028). The data analysis and the comparison with the current literature allowed the authors to hypothesise a training model to be adopted within a workplace health promotion programme managed by an occupational physician. This model included targeted training for smoking dissuasion, focusing on sex and gender, cohabitant’s influence, and combined addiction management. Further research will focus on the effectiveness of these proposed models.

Assessing Smoking Habits, Attitudes, Knowledge, and Needs among University Students at the University of Milan, Italy

“…Differences among faculties have been reported very seldom: differently from our study, Šljivo et al reported a lower prevalence of smokers in the Social Faculty (17%) than in the Technical (23.4%) and Medicine faculty (60%) in Bosnia Herzegovina [27], while Bro żek et al reported no differences between medical and non-medical students (12%) in Eastern European countries [29]. As regards the Medicine faculty, the percentage of smokers here found was much lower than in previous studies conducted in Italy among medical students, where the percentage of smokers in the 25-45% range had been reported [19][20][21][22][23]34,35].…”

“…To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study in Italy involving the entire student population of a university and investigating several aspects related to smoking. Previous studies in Italy had been limited to single university courses, and almost exclusively in Medicine and Health professions [19][20][21][22][23]. Even if the response rate was quite moderate (11%), the study participants were broadly representative of the student population for sex, age, and faculty of enrollment (Table 1).…”