The 13th World Conference on Tobacco OR Health

Objective: Workplaces are potential environments for a large number of people to stop smoking. They are also important for the educational efforts to reach to lots of people who are beyond the limits of other channels.The aim of the study was to determine the smoking status of the employees at a textile factory and to assess the effectiveness of a smoking cessation education program at a workplace.

Methods: This was a pretest-postest two groups design experimental study. Employees who stated to smoke current were stratified into intervention (n=100) and control groups (n=10). The intervention group recived smoking cessation education while control group recieved no education. Prochaska's ‘stages of change model' on smoking behavior was chosen as the guideline

Results: Of the employees 65.9% were current smokers. Before intervention, 36% of the intervention group were at precontemplation stage. Six months after the intervention decline the percentage of those at precontemplation stage was significantly lower (20%) (p= 0.001).In the control group there was not a significant reduction in the percentages of smokers at precontemplation stage before and after the intervention (p= 0.503).After the 6 months of intervention, smoking cessation rates were 6% and 2% in the intervention and control groups, respectively. The study show that the intervention could not be very successful in quitting, however it impacted the intention and preparation to quit in the future.