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Second-hand tobacco smoke (SHS) exposure at home, especially among children, is a serious issue in Viet Nam. During the past decade, much effort has been taken for tobacco control in the country, including various prgorammes aiming to reduce SHS exposure among adults and children. This article analysed trends and factors associated with SHS exposure at home among school children aged 13-15 in Viet Nam, using the Global Youth Tobacco Surveys conducted in 2007 and 2014. Descriptive and inferential statistical methods with logistic regression were applied. Overall, there was a significant reduction in the level of exposure, from 58.5% (95%CI: 57.6-59.3) in 2007 to 47.1% (95%CI: 45.4-48.8) in 2014. Of the associated factors, having one or both parents smoking was significantly associated with the highest odds of SHS exposure at home (OR=5.0; 95%CI: 4.2-6.1). Conversely, having a mother with a college or higher education level was found to be a protective factor (OR=0.5; 95%CI: 0.3-0.8).

Viet Nam is a country with the highest rate of adult male smokers in the world. In 2010, the percentage of adult male smokers was 47.4%. Each year in Viet Nam, there are 40,000 lives lost from tobacco-related diseases. The Global Tobacco Youth Survey is an international standardized survey that has been conducted in more than 140 countries. To provide evidence for tobacco control, Viet Nam already conducted two rounds of GYTS in 2003 and 2007. The GYTS in 2014 is the survey's third iteration. This paper aims to document key methodological details and socio-demographic characteristics of the respondents included in the 2014 GYTS in Viet Nam. This survey followed international protocol and was conducted in 13 provinces representative of 6 geographical regions. A total of 3,430 school children, aged 13 to 15 years used a standardized answer sheet to answer 76 questions about seven tobacco-related topics, including prevalence of tobacco use, environmental tobacco smoke, access and availability, media and advertisement, cessation, knowledge and attitudes, tobaccorelated school curriculum. This GYTS provides valid and reliable data for monitoring tobacco use among youth in Vietnam and is recommended to be regularly repeated.

Two years after implementation of the graphic health warning intervention in Vietnam, it is very important to evaluate the intervention's potential impact. The objective of this paper was to predict effects of graphic health warnings on cigarette packages, particularly in reducing cigarette demand and smoking-associated deaths in Vietnam. In this study, a discrete choice experiment (DCE) method was used to evaluate the potential impact of graphic tobacco health warnings on smoking demand. To predict the impact of GHWs on reducing premature deaths associated with smoking, we constructed different static models. We adapted the method developed by University of Toronto, Canada and found that GHWs had statistically significant impact on reducing cigarette demand (up to 10.1% through images of lung damage), resulting in an overall decrease of smoking prevalence in Vietnam. We also found that between 428,417- 646,098 premature deaths would be prevented as a result of the GHW intervention. The potential impact of the GHW labels on reducing premature smoking-associated deaths in Vietnam were shown to be stronger among lower socio-economic groups.

The aim of this paper is to report the rate of current and ever cigarette smoking and explore correlates of current cigarette smoking among adolescents aged 13-15 in Viet Nam. This analysis was derived from GYTS survey, which comprised of 3,430 adolescents aged 13-15, conducted in 2014 in 13 cities and provinces of Viet Nam. We calculated the weighted rates of current and ever cigarette smoking and reported patterns of smoking behavior. We also performed logistic regression to explore correlates of current cigarette smoking behavior. The weighted rate of ever cigarette smoking was 9.5% (95% confidence interval (CI): 8.5 %-10.5%), in which the weighted rate among males (15.4%; 95% CI: 13.6%-17.0%) was higher than that among females (4.2%; 95% CI: 3.3%-5.1%). The weighted rate of current cigarette smoking was relatively low at 2.5% (95%CI: 2.0%- 3.0%) with higher weighted rate among males (4.9%; 95% CI: 3.8%-5.9%) compared to the corresponding figure among females (0.2%; 95% CI: 0.0 %-0.5%). Current cigarette smoking was significantly higher among males than females, in students aged 15 versus 13 years old, and in students who had several or all close friends smoking and students with daily observation of smoking at school. For greater smoking reduction outcomes, we recommend that tobacco interventions for adolescents should consider targeting more male students at older ages, establish stricter adherence to school-based banning of cigarette smoking, engage both smoking and nonsmoking adolescents and empower adolescents to resist peer smoking influence as well as changing their norms or beliefs towards smoking benefits.

Smoking and harmful drinking dramatically increase health risks but little is known about their cooccurrence and factors that influence this co-habit, limiting development and implementation of appropriately targeted prevention interventions. This study was conducted among youth aged 10-24 years old in the Chi Linh Demographic - Epidemiological Surveillance System (CHILILAB DESS). The total numbers in the first, second and third rounds in 2006, 2009 and 2013 were 12,406, 10,211, and 7,654, respectively. A random-effects logit model controlling for both time-variant and time-invariant variables was applied to explore factors associated with current smoking, harmful drinking, and occurrence of smoking and harmful drinking together. We found dramatically increasing trends in current smoking, harmful drinking and co-occurrence among youth. Our results indicate similar health problems among youth in peri-urban areas in Vietnam. Demographic characteristics (older age, being male, being unmarried, and having informal work) appeared to be predictors for smoking and drinking behaviour. Besides, peer and family members had significant influence on smoking, whereas having a close-friend who was smoking was the most important variable. The results suggested that smoking and harmful drinking should not be solved with separate, stand-alone interventions but rather with integrated efforts.

Efforts to reduce tobacco use among school children need to be based on understanding of access to cigarettes by these subjects because previous studies indicated that enforcement of laws for controlling tobacco sales seems to not affect teen/school children because they can obtain cigarettes from different sources. This paper aims to describe access to and availability of cigarettes among school students (aged 13-15 years old) according to the data from GYTS Vietnam 2014. In GYTS, a national school-based survey of students of grades 8-10, our findings showed that about 15% school children are current smokers who smoke at home, and that they could easily buy cigarettes from stores (63.2%), or someone else (27.8%), or street vendors (9%). Notably, over 85% of school children answered that they were not refused because of their age. This high percentage was nearly the same in the North (85.7%), the Centre (92.5%), and the South (89.7%) of Viet Nam. These findings show that it is quite easy for school children to obtain cigarettes and this is a crucial challenge for policy makers aiming to reduce tobacco use among youth in general and school-age students in particular.