These results are consistent with a number of recent meta-analyses showing small but significant effects www.selleckchem.com/products/epz-5676.html of brief motivational interventions on smoking (Heckman et al., 2010; Hettema & Hendricks, 2010; Lai et al., 2010). Thus, the clearest implication of these findings is that further fully powered trials investigating the CD-5As approach are merited. Confirmation of the acceptability and efficacy of this approach could allow a substantial increase in the proportion of pregnant smokers who receive an evidence-based brief intervention. Funding This research was supported by grant # DA021668 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development to SJO. Declaration of Interests SJO is part owner of a company marketing authorable intervention software.
No other authors have competing interests to declare.
About 250 million children and adolescents alive today will die from tobacco use (Navarro, 2001), and 70% of these children live in developing countries (Prokhorov et al., 2006). According to global tobacco use estimates, the Region of the Americas (which included Latin America) has one of the highest rates of past-month adolescent smoking (17.5%; Warren, Jones, Eriksen, Asma, & Global Tobacco Surveillance System Colloborative Group, 2006), and in Latin America, Chilean youth have the highest smoking prevalence (CICAD, 2009/2010). More than 70% of Chilean children, 14 years or younger, have smoked cigarettes, indicating that Chilean youth begin smoking at young ages (CICAD, 2009/2010).
Moreover, Chilean girls reported higher lifetime (71%) and past-month (35%) smoking than boys (65% and 30%, respectively). According to data from the Global Youth and Tobacco Survey (Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 2008), 66% of school-aged children in Santiago, Chile, had ever smoked cigarettes, and about 34% of all students were currently smoking cigarettes. These high rates of smoking indicate that many Chilean youth will be susceptible to transitioning to nicotine dependence and heavy smoking as well as the harmful consequences of smoking, such as tobacco-related disease and death (Prokhorov et al., 2006). Yet, only scant information is available about why Chilean youth smoke. Researchers have demonstrated a significant association of adolescents�� smoking-related attitudes with smoking and intentions to smoke (Barber et al.
, 2005; Epstein, Botvin, & Spoth, 2003; Ivanovic, Castro, & Ivanovic, 1997; Johnston, O��Malley, Bachman, & Schulenberg, 2010; Otten, Harakeh, Vermulst, Van, & Engels, 2007; Otten, Wanner, Vitaro, & Engels, 2008; Rhodes, Roskos-Ewoldsen, Edison, & Bradford, 2008). Smoking-related attitudes develop before youth smoke. For this reason, attitude change is often a focus of youth smoking preventions and interventions (Wang, Brefeldin_A Fitzhugh, Eddy, & Westerfield, 1996).