The 13th World Conference on Tobacco OR Health

Objective: The overall objective of this article is to increase our understanding of gender differences in tobacco use, attitudes and exposures among Dominican Republic smokers.

Methods: Results from a survey of 659 smokers from 6 communities in the Dominican Republic (2 remote rural, 2 peri-urban and 2 small urban) will be presented. These smokers were identified by a random selection method in households with multiple adult smokers. Additionally, volunteers were surveyed to ensure a representative number of smokers from each community.

Results: Final results show that 75.9% of the smokers were smoking <10 cigarettes/day (Male = 41.4% and Female = 34.6%). 97.5% (270 of 277) of interviewed females have been pregnant and 78.2% (211 of 270) of them smoked during past or current pregnancies. Only 46% of the females who experienced pregnancy were advised by a health care provider to quit; 27% stopped smoking because of pregnancy and 58.8% of pregnant women were exposed frequently to ETS. No substantial differences were observed between males and females with respect to exposure to smoking images and smoking risk information, except that 57.6% of the males vs. 46.6% of females noticed pictures of smoking in newspapers/magazines. 97% of male smokers recognized that smoking could harm health versus 98.5% of females. 71.2% of women smoked their first cigarette within 30 minutes of waking up. While only 20.6% of females had received HCP help to quit smoking, 84.6% would be interested in receiving smoking cessation advice. 76.6% of females have made a serious attempt to stop.