Promotion of children's health: Experimental study on health education about the effects of second hand smoke

Abstract

Objective To assess the effectiveness of health education provided by nurses about the effects of second hand smoke (SHS) exposure on children.Methods The subjects were non smoking mothers of sick children admitted to the pediatric wards of four major hospitals in Hong Kong during December 1997 to April 1998, with a smoking husband, living together in the same household with the child.Eligible subjects received a health education intervention provided by nurses which included giving standardized health advice and two purpose designed and culturally relevant booklets after randomization, and a telephone reminder one week later.Results A total of 334 mothers received the telephone reminder given by nurses.About 20 percent of the mothers had read the booklet and two thirds had asked the father to read it as well.Among the fathers who had got the booklets, only 55 percent had read through it.The majority of the fathers had either stopped smoking at home (20 percent) or smoked less (38 percent) after the intervention. A comparison of smoking behaviour at baseline and 1 week indicated that less fathers still smoked at home after the intervention (83 percent vs 80 percent).More fathers who had read the booklet did not smoke at home (27 percent vs 13 percent) or smoked less (48 percent vs 38 percent) as compared with those who had not done so.There was a marked increase in the mothers (85 90 percent) taking action to protect the child from exposure to SHS by requesting the father to stop smoking,to smoke less,or not to smoke at home.Conclusion Health education is a legitimate activity of nurses and is useful in changing the father’s smoking behaviour at home and the mother’s actions in preventing SHS exposure in sick children.There is a critical need to provide health education to mothers in order to promote awareness of SHS exposure and to prevent the health risks in the family so as to reduce illness and hospital admission in children.