15 Mar 2012

The Smoking Cessation Research Team of School of Nursing, The University of Hong Kong (HKU), in collaboration with the School of Public Health, the Department of Social Work and Social Administration of HKU and the Hong Kong Council on Smoking and Health, established the first youth-oriented smoking cessation hotline ‘Youth Quitline 2855 9557’ in 2005. Recently, the team has received additional funding from the Tobacco Control Office, Department of Health to strengthen the service. Subsequently, the Youth Quitline Centre is set up under the Centre for Health Promotion of HKU School of Nursing.

The opening ceremony of Youth Quitline Centre is held today (March 15) at HKU, and officiated by Dr York Chow Yat-ngok, GBS, JP, Secretary for Food and Health; Dr Raymond Ho Lei-ming, Head of the Tobacco Control Office; Professor Sophia Chan Siu-chee, Project Director of the Youth Quitline and Professor of School of Nursing, HKU; Professor Lam Tai-hing, Sir Robert Kotewall Professor in Public Health, Director of School of Public Health, HKU; and Ms Lisa Lau Man-man, MH, JP, Chairman of Hong Kong Council on Smoking and Health. Dr York Chow says, "Statistics indicate that about 70% of daily smokers started smoking below the age of 20, therefore the strengthening of tobacco control targeting youngsters is the key to reducing the smoking population.”

Professor Sophia Chan Siu-chee, Project Director of the Youth Quitline and Professor of School of Nursing, HKU says, “Since the establishment of Youth Quitline in 2005, we have received 3,732 telephone inquiries and provided telephone smoking cessation counseling for 741 youth smokers. Among them, 180 (24%) quitted successfully. To further elevate our service, we have already trained a group of 34 HKU students to be “Youth Smoking Cessation Counselor (YSCC)” and now providing more intensive telephone follow-up counseling to support youth to maintain smoking abstinence. Also, working with the Quit Victoria in Australia, we plan to launch a web-based smoking cessation interactive service by the end of the year.”

The relationship between depressive symptoms, youth smoking and quitting
At the opening ceremony, the School of Nursing of the University of Hong Kong also presents the findings on the relationship between youth smoking and presence of depressive symptoms. Among the 578 youth smokers who received YQ service from March 2006 to May 2011, 47% (273/578) had different levels of depressive symptoms. Among the female callers, 54% (81/151) female had depressive symptoms, compared to 45% (192/427) in male who had depressive symptoms.

The study shows that smokers with depressive symptoms had a higher level of nicotine dependency. Although they had similar levels of intention to quit smoking compared with those who had no depressive symptoms, they perceived lower confidence in successful quitting and higher level of difficulty in quitting. At 6-month follow up, only 10.6% (5/47) of youth smokers who have notable depressive symptoms stopped smoking (no smoking in the past 7 days), while the successful rate of youth smokers without depressive symptoms is 32.3% (111/345) (assumed all lost to follow-up did not change their smoking behaviour). Youth smokers with notable depressive symptoms required a longer period of time (an average of 15 days after receiving telephone counseling) to initiate a quit attempt, and more prone to smoking relapse as only 18% could sustain smoking abstinence for about seven days or above.

Professor Sophia Chan Siu-chee, Project Director of the Youth Quitline and Professor of School of Nursing, HKU says, ‘We have trained a group of dynamic and caring HKU students who acted as peer counselors and providing a Youth-to-Youth counseling service to the smokers. As they are of similar age as the youth smokers, they have a more thorough understanding on the pressure that the youth are facing. Through counseling, we not only help the youth smokers quit smoking and provide advice on how to prevent relapse, but also help them release their negative emotions and give them encouragement. At 6-month follow-up, there is a drop of 7.2% (from 47.2% to 40%) in the number of youth with depressive symptoms.” According to Professor Chan, depressive symptoms can hinder smoking cessation process in youth, so the counselors may need to offer emotional support in order to help the youth quit smoking when providing counseling. Therefore, the School has also included elements like understanding characteristics of youth and emotional counseling skills in the training courses for counselors.

Youth smoking in Hong Kong
The World Health Organisation states that smoking is the most preventable cause of death. Studies show that at least two out of three smokers will eventually die from smoking-attributable diseases. At present, there are about 15,000 secondary students who are current smokers in Hong Kong. Smoking can damage the cardiopulmonary and circulatory system. Previous studies also confirm that youth smokers are more prone to diseases including cough, asthma, sore throat, back pain, neck pain, headache, dizziness, poor appetite, digestive disorders, skin diseases, anxiety, insomnia, depression, and menstrual pain, etc. Quitting smoking can largely reduce smoking-attributable mortality and morbidity. Despite the fact that over half of the youth smokers have intention to quit smoking as revealed by the school-based survey conducted by HKU School of Public Health, most smoking cessation services in Hong Kong target on adults, which may be less effective in helping youth to quit smoking. In view of this, HKU School of Nursing established the Youth Quitline in 2005 to help the youth quit at an earlier age.

About the Youth Quitline 2855 9557
The Youth Quitline aims to raise the awareness of smoking cessation service among youth smokers in Hong Kong and to provide smoking cessation quitline service to them. It also aims to provide training to teenagers as peer smoking cessation counselors so that they will publicise smoking cessation to their peers and offer counseling to youth smokers. The quitline targets on youth smokers aged 25 or below and it operates 5 – 9pm on weekdays and 2 – 8pm over weekends. Voice mails will be recorded during non-operation hours and public holidays. The service of Youth Quitline is FREE of CHARGE and all youth are welcomed to call the hotline and join the smoking cessation programme. The School of Nursing, HKU welcomes collaboration with the community to advocate and promote smoking cessation among youth smokers.

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