“Illicit Use of Tobacco” - A Street Play to Spread Antitobacco Awareness Among the General Public Attending Tagore Dental and Medical College & Hospitals, Chennai, India

Abstract

Background: Tobacco is the foremost preventable cause of death and disease in the world today, killing half of the people who use it. In the south-east Asia Region (SEAR), smoking prevalence ranges from 29.8% to 63.1% among men and 0.4%–15% among women. The practice of tobacco needs attention. World No Tobacco Day is the event dedicated to call attention toward the impact of tobacco use on public health and reduce individual tobacco dependence. The day is further intended to draw attention to the widespread prevalence of tobacco use and to negative health effects. Aim: · To assess the effectiveness of street play in creating awareness of tobacco hazards among rural population of Chennai.⋅ To evaluate the knowledge gained by the rural population about tobacco hazards from street play using a closed ended questionnaire. Methods: The study was a cross sectional and community based study. The target population for this study was the outpatients attending Tagore Medical and Dental Hospitals, Rathinamangalam, Chennai. The current study was conducted between 19th May 2017 to 26th May 2017, among the outpatients attending Tagore Medical and Dental Hospitals, Rathinamangalam, Chennai. Mainly, the awareness is created by stressing the ill effects and illicit use of any form of tobacco through street play conducted daily for a week in the hospital premises. Result: The preintervention assessment revealed poor knowledge scores on various aspect of harmful effects of tobacco, which significantly improved after intervention. It is conceptual that rural population is not aware of passive smoking or second hand smoke, but our study group accounted to 86% of awareness. Feedback received after street play: after any street play or role play it's good to have feedback from community members to know how effective our play was in spreading the message among them. We were fortunate enough to get good response from community members post play. Overall the feedback of the street play excelled with a score of 96% gaining new knowledge about tobacco hazards, enlightening the thought process in this regard. Conclusion: As a result, the street play in local language and pictorial posters proved to be an effective health educational tool among illiterates and repeated use, before the transition season, for maximum impact.