Smoking Habits and Health Promotion among University Students in King Faisal University: A Cross-Sectional study

Abstract

To assess the incidence of smoking, habits and awareness among students of King Faisal university and to find association of smoking with socio-demographic determinants and to recommend health promotion activities among the university. This cross sectional study recruited a total of 606 students by administering a self-administered questionnaire. Mean age of the students was 21.8±2.1 years. 52.3% male and 47.7% female students enrolled during Mar-Aug 2023 from King Faisal University, Saudi Arabia. Descriptive and inferential statistics was applied by using SPSS software version-26. 10.1% incidence of smoking was reported in this study. Mostly male students (90.2%) were active smokers. Rate of smoking increased in 4^th and 5^th educational year. Effect of cohabitants in encouraging smoking was considered the significant factor. There were 345(56.9%) medical and 261 (43.1%) non-medical students, out of which 34(9.9%) and 27 (10.3%) active smokers respectively. More than 90% medical and non-medical students consider smoking as a risk factor for most of the diseases (p=0.013) and second hand smoke is also harmful to health (p=0.001), although 270 (78.3%) medical and 191 (73.2%) non-medical students stated that there should be a ban on smoking in public places (p=0.008) with significant findings. In the light of the findings of the study and comparison with the existing literature, it is suggested to propose a training model that might be implemented as a health promotion program. Using this framework, we found that a combination of targeted training for smoking dissuasion, cohabitant influence, and integrated addiction management will be effective in reducing cigarette consumption. Additional investigation is need to be conducted to determine the efficacy of these proposed models.