SMOKING BEHAVIOR AND POSSIBLE INTERVENTION METHOD AMONG ROMANIAN ADOLESCENTS.

Context: There are many scientific articles and studies, both at national and international level, analyzing the adolescents smoking behavior and its influencing factors. One could find much information from these studies about the adolescents smoking habits and about different prevention methods. The present article originality - at least in Romanian context - consists in two new dimensions: one is to analyse not only the smoking behavior of the adolescents, but also their exposure to second hand smoking (SHS). The other dimension is related to the proposed intervention method to reduce the prevalence of smoking (and also SHS): utilizing the community intervention method. Methodology: Three counties of Transylvania were chosen in order to shape a representative sample of 14-15 aged adolescents (in VII and VIII grade), including parameters such as the size of the settlement, type of school, location of school inside the settlement, language of education etc. For data collection a questionnaire was applied (in Romanian or Hungarian, according to the nationality of the respondents). Results: The results show that there is a high second hand smoke exposure of the adolescents in different spaces of the community where they live. Moreover the exposure of home SHS is related with lower age at first try, higher probability of tobacco usage, higher probability of smoking friends etc. Therefore we think that only a community-level intervention would produce the most efficient results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]