Online classes at health promoting schools as a method of counteracting nicotine addiction

Abstract

Introduction. Russia occupies one of the first places in terms of tobacco consumption. Objective. To evaluate the effectiveness of health promoting schools (online) classes as a method of counteracting nicotine addiction. Materials and methods. Completed questionnaires (Google forms) indicating gender, age, chronic diseases, history of pulmonary tuberculosis and feedback options (phone, e-mail) were analyzed, as well as the Fagerstrom test to determine nicotine addiction before and within six months after classes at the health promoting school among 241 people who attended the school class in online format in 2021. Data processing was done in Excel. Statistical data processing was carried out using the Statistica 8.0 program: descriptive statistics indicators were calculated, statistical significance of differences in the va­lues of indicators between groups was determined using the Wald-Wolfowitz Runs Test. Results and Discussion. This strategy proved to be effective. This is evidenced by the fact of quitting smoking among 24 (9.96±1.9%) respondents after attending health promoting school online, an increase in the number of people with very weak nicotine addiction from 99 (41.08±3.2%) to 110 (45.64±3.2%) (11 persons). The number of persons with high nicotine addiction decreased from 42 (17.43±2.4%) to 28 (11.61±2.1%), the same can be observed in the category of respondents with weak nicotine addiction, here the number of persons decreased from 60 (24.9±2.8%) to 44 (18.26±2.5%). In the group of respondents with an average nicotine addiction, the number of people decreased from 18 (7.47±1.7%) to 16 (6.64±1.6%), and in the group with a very high nicotine addiction it decreased from 22 (9.13±1.6%) to 19 (7.88±1.7%) persons. Conclusion. Despite the difficult epidemiological situation associated with COVID-19, after the classes, there was a trend in the severity of nicotine addiction decrease in the majority of respondents, and 24 out of 241 people who provided feedback completely gave up smoking. From this, it can be concluded that online health promotion classes increase the effectiveness of the counteracting the nicotine addiction.