Background: About 28.6% of Indian population aged 15 years and above use tobacco in any form. With the pictorial warning on tobacco products, awareness towards tobacco hazards has increased with time but its role alone towards cessation... more
Background: About 28.6% of Indian population aged 15 years and above use tobacco in any form. With the pictorial warning on tobacco products, awareness towards tobacco hazards has increased with time but its role alone towards cessation is questionable. This research was conducted to study the pattern of tobacco usage among residents of an urban area and also to know the factors influencing their intention to quit.
Background: Adolescent boys are more inclined towards risky behaviors like smoking than girls and those who initiate smoking early in life are more likely to continue to smoke as adults. Peers in schools have a major role on influencing,... more
Background: Adolescent boys are more inclined towards risky behaviors like smoking than girls and those who initiate smoking early in life are more likely to continue to smoke as adults. Peers in schools have a major role on influencing, initiating and continuation of smoking among boys. Therefore, the present study was undertaken to compare the prevalence of tobacco use among boys studying in single-sex school and co-education school and to study the factors associated with tobacco use in both the schools.Methods: A comparative study was conducted in two randomly selected high schools in the urban field practice area of the medical institution; one of it being boys only (single-sex) and another co-education (co-ed) school. All the students studying in 8th, 9th and 10th standard were included in the study. A self-administered, pretested, structured questionnaire adapted from the WHO youth tobacco questionnaire was used to collect the data on tobacco usage, knowledge and attitude alo...
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While the proportion of a population needed to be vaccinated against COVID-19 to achieve herd immunity has not yet been established, addressing COVID-19-related vaccine hesitancy is expected to lead to greater numbers of vaccinated... more
While the proportion of a population needed to be vaccinated against COVID-19 to achieve herd immunity has not yet been established, addressing COVID-19-related vaccine hesitancy is expected to lead to greater numbers of vaccinated individuals, in turn resulting in fewer COVID-19 cases, reduced infection transmission and fewer deaths. Reasons for vaccine hesitancy are influenced by a spectrum of factors from individual belief system to external sources of information. We need to adopt a multi-pronged approach which involves socio demographic domains to achieve herd immunity.