The 13th World Conference on Tobacco OR Health

Objective: Tobacco cessation among youth is a neglected area in Bangladesh as is the case in many other countries. Every year a lot of youth take up this long-term career of smoking cigarettes, which could be prevented by initiating appropriate public health interventions. The Bangladesh Health Foundation(BDHF) is one of the first organization to initiate smoking cessation activities (problem identification, capacity building and research) among different population groups. The aim of the youth smoking cessation program is to identify current barriers in cessation among youth smokers and develop culturally appropriate programs to encourage them in quitting smoking. One of the strengths of our program is the involvement of youth in the design and implementation of work and giving youth the responsibility to run the programs (through Foundation's Youth Health Ambassador Scheme).

Methods: Exploratory studies among 4 groups of secondary school students (10 in each group), 2 groups of college students (16 in each group) and 2 groups of secondary school teachers (total 18 teachers) have been completed. The Foundation has collected resource materials for youth and teachers from the WHO which will be translated into Bengali (spoken language in Bangladesh). The next step is to carry out a survey among students in different districts to collect baseline information and implement a program following Cognitive Learning Theory & the Prochaska's Stages of Change Model.

Results: We would like to present an overview of the youth smoking cessation program of the BDHFand discuss the process of developing a research-based smoking cessation program for Bangladeshi youth.