ABSTRACT
Background: Substance abuse is a major but neglected public health problem across the globe. Most of the time it starts during adolescence, which is also considered a critical risk period for the initiation of substance use. Materials and Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional analytical study to estimate the prevalence and determine the association of socio-demographic and other risk factors with substance abuse among adolescents in an urban area of Himachal Pradesh. A multi-stage cluster with probability proportional to size sampling technique was followed and a semi-structured, pretested questionnaire was used as the study tool. Results: We studied a total of 728 participants and 39.6% were females. The mean age was 15.6 ± 1.3 years. Out of these, 12.1% reported any substance abuse earlier in their lifetime. Among ever users, most commonly abused substance was alcohol (8.9%), followed by smoked tobacco (7.1%), bhang (3.7%), hard liquor (2.8%), charas/ganja (1.4%), chewing tobacco (1.4%), inhalants (fluid/eraser) 0.82%, prescription drugs (cough syrup/tablets 0.69% and injecting drugs 0.27%), Chitta (0.27%), opium and heroin with 0.14% each. On multiple logistic regression analysis, male gender (AOR=1.82), among friend’s tobacco smoking (AOR=2.33), alcohol abuse (AOR=4.52), and cannabis abuse (AOR=2.99) were found to be associated with an increased likelihood of substance abuse. High socio-economic status (AOR=0.59) and tobacco chewing among friends (AOR=0.49) had a protective effect on indulgence in substance abuse. Conclusion: The influence of peers played the most significant predictor while the presence of substance abuse in the family was also associated with an increased likelihood of abuse by adolescents.
ABSTRACT
Background: Cancer prevention and control needs to be based on effective implementation of all approaches. Community as well as individual level interventions to increase knowledge and early reporting have shown effectiveness. A community-based intervention trial was conducted to design, implement and test short-term outcomes of evidence based preventive strategies.Methods: A mixed methods, three phased study was conducted in three districts of Delhi, which were selected by a random process. Two randomly selected districts out of these three were intervention districts while third was the control. A total sample of 500 in each district was studied in quantitative pre and post -intervention phases. Multistage, stratified, cluster sampling was utilized. Pre-tested and validated tools were used.Results: Post intervention, statistically significant higher scores were observed in all domains in intervention districts as compared to control (p<0.01). Though comparison of slum versus non-slum showed significant increment in knowledge and practice scores, with higher scores for non-slum respondents, the attitudes were very similar (p>0.05). The increment score changes between males and females was similar in all classes of society versus control district. Comparison within the intervention and control groups revealed increased scores in intervention districts and decreased scores in control district, in all domains (p<0.05).Conclusions: Our study has helped in understanding the determinants of perceptions, attitude and practices regarding cancer in the community, This, helped in formulating the need-based intervention strategies. Testing the short-term outcome of intervention showed it to be effective.