Abstract:

Tobacco hazard is one of the most serious preventable public health problems in the world today. At present, there are 1.1 billion smokers in the world, and about 5 million people die from smoking-related diseases every year. China has about 350 million smokers, with the number of smoking-attributable mortality of 1.2 million every year. It is estimated that by 2030 this number will increase to 2 million, accounting for 30% of the total mortality rate. For the sake of taking targeted prevention and control measures, the current smoking status and main influencing factors of population should be mastered. Therefore, World Health Organization, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Canadian Public Health Association cooperated in 1998 and developed Global Tobacco Surveillance System to help the countries all over the world study the current smoking status and influencing factors of population by the unified and comparable survey tools. Some cities of China have respectively participated in Global Youth Tobacco Survey twice. Shanghai took part in the second youth tobacco survey in 2004, and found that the attempting smoking rate of middle school students was 23.8% and the smoking rate was 5.5%. However, as a component city of Chinese sample, the actual sample size of Shanghai was small, only 1964 people. In order to overcome the disadvantages of small sample size and difficulty in deep sample analysis, a survey towards 9 347 students including junior middle school students, senior high school students and vocational school students was conducted in 2007, and it was found that the total smoking rate among adolescents of Shanghai was 19.5%. Supported by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, our research group conducted a large sample survey on youth tobacco use in Shanghai from November 2011 to March 2012 so as to learn the current situation of youth tobacco use and influencing factors. The preliminary research results have been assembled. This paper deals with the review of tobacco hazard, the methodology and brief contents of Global Youth Tobacco Survey, the summary of the survey on youth tobacco use in Shanghai and the characteristics and primary results of our survey on the current youth tobacco use in Shanghai.

Key words: youth, tobacco, Global Youth Tobacco Survey, Global Tobacco Surveillance System, Shanghai