Addictive Behaviors Reports (Jun 2019)

Three-month effects of Project EX: A smoking intervention pilot program with Korean adolescents

  • Sheila Yu,
  • Artur Galimov,
  • Steve Sussman,
  • Goo Churl Jeong,
  • Sung Rae Shin

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 9

Abstract

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Despite current prevention and cessation efforts, adolescent smoking remains a pressing issue worldwide, including in Korea. The current study evaluates Project EX-Korea, a teen tobacco use cessation program, three months after baseline. The quasi-experimental trial intervention involved 160 smokers in 10th to 12th grade, 85 from the program condition schools and 75 from the control. At three-month follow-up, the intent-to-treat (ITT) quit rate in the program group (30.2%) was 3.6 times that of the rate in the standard care control group (9.2%; p < 0.05). Among those who did not quit, those in the program group smoked less on average than those in the control group, but there was no difference in follow-up mFTQ scores between the two non-quitter groups. As teen tobacco use cessation programming is much needed in Korea, Project EX is a plausible program to implement among Korean adolescents. Keywords: Tobacco, Smoking cessation, Project EX, Korea