Association between Parental Smoking Status and Smoking Initiation among Children in the Gambia: Global Youth Tobacco Survey (GYTS)
Abstract:
Tobacco use is one of the leading causes of morbidities and mortalities that result from noncommunicable diseases globally. It is therefore imperative to understand the determinants of tobacco use initiation among children at different ages in order to come up with the most effective prevention strategies. This study examined the relationship between age (early, middle and late adolescence) at smoking initiation and parental smoking and other covariates. A total analytic sample of 1,301 participants between ages 11 and 17 from the cross-sectional Gambian Global Youth Tobacco Survey (GYTS) of 2017 were included in this study. We conducted descriptive analyses for each potential predictor variable by each of the categories of the outcome variable (early, middle and late adolescence smoking initiation). Since the outcome variable is not binary, we conducted multinomial logistic regression to identify the factors associated with initiation. While parents’ smoking was not significantly associated with any age cohort at smoking initiation, close friends’ smoking was strongly associated with smoking initiation at all the 3 stages of adolescence - 0.84 (95%CI: 0.28-1.39); 0.77 (95%CI: 0.05-1.49); and 1.69 (95%CI: 1.69-2.71) at early, middle and late adolescence, respectively). While other people smoking at home was only associated with smoking initiation at early adolescence (0.79 [95%CI: 0.30-1.29]), perceived harm from smoking was statistically associated with smoking initiation at only middle and late adolescence (0.64 [95%CI: 0.17-1.12] and 1.01 [95%CI:0.33-1.68], respectively). Thus, it is of paramount importance that programs and policies targeting the prevention of smoking initiation among adolescents are tailored to what works best for each of the 3 age categories (early, middle and late adolescence).References:
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