Students' Knowledge and Attitudes Towards Smoke-Free Universities: Changes Since Enactment of Vietnamese Tobacco Control Legislation

Abstract

Background: In 2013, legislation in Vietnam regulated smoking in public areas. Included was a ban on indoor smoking at universities. Objective: Since awareness and attitude are moderators of the effectiveness of smokefree policy, ou aim was to assess changes in students' knowledge and attitude tosecond hand smoke (SHS) and awareness and support of smoke-free legislation at four Vietnamese universities, one year after legislative changes. Methods: A two-phase cross sectional study of undergraduate students using self-administered questionnaires (based on the Global Adult Tobacco Survey and the Thrasher survey) was conducted at the introduction of the legislation and one year thereafter. Results: One-year post legislation there were significant increases in knowledge of smoke-free legislation and awareness of universities as smoke-free environments. There was a significant increase in knowledge of harmful effects of SHS on diseases such as examples in the heart and lung, including lung cancer, and miscarriage. Students expressed strong support of smoke-free environments in universities, hospitals, schools, workplaces, public transport, libraries, cinemas and theatres; support was also increased post legislation. Changes were seen in attitude to SHS, and rights of non-smokers and smokers. Conclusions: Positive changes have occurred in knowledge and attitude toward smoke-free environments and SHS in universities since enactment of Vietnamese tobacco control legislation.

Development and evaluation of smoke-free or tobacco-free policies in university settings: a systematic scoping review

“…We included 105 references, published between 1993 and 2019, representing 75 unique studies, which described the development or implementation and evaluation of SF/TF university policies in various universities. As shown in Figure 2, most studies were conducted in North America (50/75, 66.7%), including the United States (46 studies), and Canada (4 studies: [9,[28][29][30][31]); one study was conducted in Brazil [32]; 10 studies (14.7%) were conducted in Asian countries, such as Japan (3 studies: [33][34][35]), China [36], South Korea [37], Taiwan [38], Vietnam [39], India [40], Pakistan [41], and Malaysia [42]; 4 studies came from Europe (Germany [43], Ireland [44][45][46], Switzerland [47], and Russia [48]); 6 from the Middle East and North Africa (Bahrain [49], Egypt [50], Israel [51], Lebanon [52], Saudi Arabia [53], and Sudan [54]; and 4 from Oceania (3 studies from Australia [55][56][57][58], 1 from New Zealand [59]). While the majority of the studies were of single universities, some reported case studies or analyses of multiple universities based in Australia [55], Canada [28], China [36], India [40], New Zealand [59], Russia…”

“…Impact only studies were predominantly quantitative (30/35, 85.7%), mostly based on cross-sectional surveys collecting information about various indicators of impact (further described below). Some impact studies included empirical research used to test interventions aimed at improving the acceptance or use of a policy, such as before-after studies [33,39,47,62,[75][76][77][78][79], or quasi-experimental interventions [37,48].…”