Factors associated with smoking cessation in a Kenyan community

• Published in: Tobacco induced diseases Vol. 16; no. 1
• Main Authors: Magu, Dennis, Mutai, Joseph
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Heraklion European Publishing 01-03-2018
• Subjects: Addictions; Chi-square test; Cigarette smoking; Community; Dependent variables; Drug addiction; Independent variables; Nicotine; Smoking; Smoking cessation; Statistical analysis; Statistical tests; Tobacco; WCTOH
• ISSN: 1617-9625; 1617-9625
• DOI: 10.18332/tid/84223

Background: The community members in any country play a major role in behavioral aspects of smoking cessation. Many smokers do not acknowledge that they are addicted to tobacco. Through this majority of individuals do not quit smoking and are left without intervention. The risk to experiment lead to development of a regular smoking pattern due to addictive nature of nicotine. Methods: This was a cross sectional study carried out among community members in Kenya. Three hundred and ten study participants were selected to participate in the study. A convenience sampling technique was adopted during recruitment of the study participants. This was achieved through administering questionnaires, data was entered in Microsoft access database and later exported to SPSS for analysis. Descriptive statistics was done to report frequencies of variables and inferential statistics for categorical variables. The Chi square test of association was used to establish association between dependent and independent outcome variables. Results: A total of 310 participants were recruited while 70% had inadequate knowledge on smoking cessation. Majority(72%) of the respondents had not received information on smoking cessation. Majority (75%) of the respondents felt it was difficult to quit smoking due to addiction. There was an association between peers, friends and the number of cigar< 0.05. There were concerns on insufficient information and low knowledge level towards smoking cessation among the subjects. There was a significant association between smoking, level of income and education level p value < 0.05 Conclusions: There is need to improve community's knowledge on smoking cessation through gatherings and local barazas to handle stress, low self esteem