The 13th World Conference on Tobacco OR Health

Objective: “Smoke Free Class” (SFC) is an European school-based program which main goals are smoking prevention and cessation. In Portugal, all pupils from the participating classes commit themselves to not smoke for 5 months and the program also includes a competition based on smoking prevention activities developed by participating classes. In 2005, 106 classes from 31 schools participated and 94 classes reached the end. The objective of the study is to evaluate the effectiveness of the program.

Methods: Pupils from 6th till 12th grade answered one questionnaire in the beginning (n=2287) and one in the end (n= 1964) about their opinion about the Program and their smoking behaviour.

Results: In the beginning, 71,1% pupils were “never smokers”, 19,6% were “experimenters”, 4,7% were “quitters”, 1,7% were “occasional smokers” and 2,9% “regular smokers” and in the end, 69,0% were “never smokers”, 20,8% “were “experimenters”, 5,2% were “quitters” 3,5% were “occasional smokers” and 2,8% “regular smokers”. The analysis of individual changes in smoking behaviour (n=1241), shown that 9,1% of pupils that were regular smokers before the program quitted and 4,5% reduced, and from the pupils that never smoked before, only 0,4% have started to smoke. The majority said that were satisfied by participating in SFC Program (75,1%), 67% think that the SFC Program can help some pupils to quit smoking (2,5% answered that quitted smoking because of it and 12,3% answered that know someone who did it). Great part of pupils recognise that the Program is important for them (53,7%) and for the school (84,3%).