Prevalence and Trends of Cigarette Smoking Among Military Personnel in Taiwan: Results of 10-Year Anti-Smoking Health Promotion Programs in Military.

Objectives: The purpose of this study is to evaluate the prevalence and trends of cigarette smoking among young military conscripts, military officers, and military university students during recently 10 years in Taiwan.

Methods: Repeated cross-sectional surveys were conducted annually among young military conscripts and military university students from 2006 to 2014. All the young conscripts were reviewed within 1 month at the military training center and before retiring after 1 year of military services. The military officers were included using purposive sampling from 2004 to 2008 and 2013 to 2014 in different military services. Military university students were included in this study. Freshman and senior students were random sampled as the study subjects. Participants completed a structured questionnaire that included questions on general demographics and health-related behaviors. Current smokers is defined as subjects who smoked ≥1 cigarette/day during the past 30 days or had smoked ≥100 cigarettes in their lifetime or still have the habit of smoking during study. We used a χ test to examine the difference between the prevalence of cigarette smoking among different groups. The Cochran-Armitage test for trend was applied to examine the change of prevalence of smoking after repeated cross-sectional surveys among populations.

Results: The prevalence of cigarette smoking within military training center and after 1-year military services was 48.6% and 48.1% on 2006, which became 39.2% and 38.6% on 2010, and then further declined to 31.0% and 30.1% on 2014. For military officers, the trends of prevalence of smoking among different military services showed slight decline from 2004 to 2008, but decreased significantly between 2013 and 2014. The prevalence of smoking in 2014 was 32.1%, 32.8%, and 32.4% for the Army, Navy, and Air Force, respectively. More interestingly, the prevalence of smoking of freshman and senior students increased during the first 5 years (2007-2011) of survey and then decreased after 2012. Furthermore, in 2014, the prevalence of smoking decreased as the difference became smaller, 4.5% and 6.1% for freshman and senior, respectively.

Conclusion: During this 10-year period, the smoking cessation programs include in-class education course, out-door physical training, antismoking clinic, and group therapy. After these military health promoting programs, there are some beneficial effects to decline the prevalence of cigarette smoking for military personnel in Taiwan. However, more active intervention and health promoting programs in prevention and cessation of smoking are needed for the military. The military also have to develop specific approaches and programs to prevent cigarette smoking among conscripts and officers.