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Research paper
Assessment of tobacco control advocacy behavioural capacity among students at schools of public health in China
  1. Tingzhong Yang1,
  2. Abu S Abdullah2,3,
  3. Ian R H Rockett4,
  4. Mu Li1,5,
  5. Yuhua Zhou6,
  6. Jun Ma7,
  7. Huaping Ji8,
  8. Jianzhong Zheng9,
  9. Yuhong Zhang10,
  10. Liming Wang11
  1. 1Center for Tobacco Control Research, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China
  2. 2Department of International Health, Boston University School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
  3. 3School of Public Health and Primary Care, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
  4. 4Injury Control Research Center and Department of Community Medicine, West Virginia University, Morgantown, West Virginia, USA
  5. 5School of Public Health, University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
  6. 6School of Public Health, Guangdong Pharmaceutical College, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China
  7. 7School of Public Health, Beijing University, Beijing, China
  8. 8School of Public Health, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China
  9. 9School of Public Health, Shanxi Medical University, Taiyuan, Shanxi, China
  10. 10School of Public Health, Ningxia Medical University, Yinchuan, Ningxia, China
  11. 11School of Public Health, Haerbin Medical University, Haerbin, Helongjiang, China
  1. Correspondence to T Yang, School of Medicine Zijinggang Campus of Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China; ytingzhongyang{at}yahoo.com

Abstract

Objectives To evaluate student tobacco control advocacy behavioural capacity using longitudinal trace data.

Methods A tobacco control advocacy curriculum was developed and implemented at schools of public health (SPH) or departments of public health in seven universities in China. Participants comprised undergraduate students studying the public health curriculum in these 13 Universities. A standardised assessment tool was used to evaluate their tobacco control advocacy behavioural capacity. Repeated measures analysis of variance, paired t tests and paired χ2 tests were used to determine differences between dependent variables across time. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and multivariate logistic regression were used to assess treatment effects between intervention and control sites.

Results Respective totals of 426 students in the intervention group and 338 in the control group were available for the evaluation. Approximately 90% of respondents were aged 21 years or older and 56% were women. Findings show that the capacity building program significantly improved public health student advocacy behavioural capacity, including advocacy attitude, interest, motivation and anti-secondhand smoke behaviours. The curriculum did not impact student smoking behaviour.

Conclusions This study provides sufficient evidence to support the implementation of tobacco control advocacy training at Chinese schools of public health.

  • Tobacco control
  • advocacy
  • behavioural capacity, undergraduate students
  • China
  • cessation
  • environmental tobacco smoke
  • young adults

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial License, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non commercial and is otherwise in compliance with the license. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/ and http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/legalcode.

https://doi.org/10.1136/tc.2010.036590

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    Footnotes

    • Funding Bloomberg Global Initiative project supported by the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (U-China-1-15).

    • Competing interests None.

    • Patient consent Obtained.

    • Ethics approval This study was conducted with the approval of the Ethics Committee of the participating Universities.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.