The 13th World Conference on Tobacco OR Health

Objective: To empower Buddhist monks, using their high-status, to extent their roles to tobacco control. Cambodia is a Buddhist country where 95% of population is Buddhist. There are 4,106 Wats (pagodas) and over 58,800 monks (a significant proportion of the population of 13 Million) Wat is a source of education and Buddhist monks are very influential in teaching people to do good things.

Methods: The Smoke-free Buddhist monk project was initiated in 2001 to advocate Buddhist monks to platy an important part in tobacco control. This five year project involved Buddhist monks from the highest level (patriarchs) to the common monks who live in community with three core activities: advocacy for law/legislation development and implementation, providing awareness on tobacco damages to public, and helping people to quit smoking. Integration anti-smoking messages into the National Buddhist Curriculum, quit counseling, preaching, integrated training etc are among the routine activities. As the result many Buddhist monks quit smoking and become role models and more than 28 major Wats have declared smoke-free. In addition, this project invited Buddhist monks in neighboring countries in the region discussing Buddhist monk's roles and sharing tobacco related strategies they implement in their countries.

Result: Specifically, Buddhist monks have been surveyed by the ToH program, and the result indicated that the smoking prevalence of Buddhist Monks dropped 13% from 2001 to 2004 in the five intervention provinces.