Reducing Secondhand Smoke Exposure: Community Education to Reduce Exposure in the Home

Task Force Finding*

Community education provides information to parents, other occupants, and visitors to the home about the importance of reducing or eliminating ETS to protect nonsmoking adults and children. Education interventions attempt to motivate household members to modify smoking habits to reduce exposure of nonsmokers to indoor ETS (by establishing home policies restricting or banning smoking) if they cannot quit entirely.

The Task Force review identified only one qualifying study of community-wide education interventions including an ETS component, an insufficient number of studies for assessing the effectiveness of the intervention. Details of the qualifying study are provided in Hopkins et al. A recent review of efforts to reduce children’s exposure to ETS reached a similar conclusion.

*From the following publication:

Task Force on Community Preventive Services. Recommendations regarding interventions to reduce tobacco use and exposure to environmental tobacco smoke. [PDF - 1.46KB] Am J Prev Med 2001;20(2S):10-5.

Review completed: February 2000