Types of Interventions for Smoking Prevention and Cessation in Children and Adolescents.

Smoking among children and adolescents is a pressing public health issue that demands the development, improvement and implementation of programmes aimed at the prevention and cessation of smoking on a global scale. The objective of our article is to review the main types of interventions for smoking prevention and cessation among children and adolescents. These interventions are based on a wide variety of approaches and include school-based programmes, primary and secondary care-based interventions, programmes targeting parents and family, community-based programmes, social marketing programmes and media campaigns, legislative interventions and computer and other IT-based interventions. Generally, there is still a paucity of low level evidence regarding the efficacy of most smoking prevention and cessation programmes for children and adolescents except for a few particular types of interventions that are reasonably well documented.