Webinar: School-based curricula for preventing smoking in children and adolescents: What’s the evidence?

Health Evidence will be hosting a 60 minute webinar examining the effectiveness of school-based smoking prevention curricula in keeping children and adolescents never-smokers.

Dr. Roger Thomas, Professor, Faculty of Medicine, University of Calgary, will be leading the session, and will present findings from his latest systematic review and meta-analysis:

Thomas, R. E., McLellan, J., & Perera, R. (2015). Effectiveness of school-based smoking prevention curricula: Systematic review and meta-analysis. BMJ Open, 5(3).

Over the past three decades, the school environment has been a particular focus of efforts to influence youth smoking behaviour. This review examines the effectiveness of school-based smoking prevention curricula in keeping children never-smokers. 50 RCTs (74 different intervention arms, n=143 495) are included in this review. For baseline child and adolescent never-smokers, a significant effect in preventing starting smoking (12%) was found at the longest follow up. However, there was no effect of school-based smoking prevention curricula at ≤1 year except for social competence and combined social competence + social skills curricula. This webinar will highlight which curricula types are most effective, as well as the gaps in knowledge that remain with regard to smoking prevention curricula in youth.