On the basis of new recommendations from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), it has been felt that primary health care providers must offer interventions in order to prevent children and adolescents from smoking tobacco.
The success rates of the primary care intervention methods over the rates of cessation of tobacco use in children and teens were reviewed by Dr. Virginia Moyer, who wrote the report.
While giving out a statement she stated that the evidence “has shown that primary care providers can provide simple, economical, and effective interventions to help prevent tobacco use among children and teens. Although most serious and life-threatening effects from smoking show up in adults, it is important for children and adolescents to understand that young smokers can suffer from impaired lung growth, early onset of lung deterioration, and respiratory and asthma-related symptoms.”
Moyer further suggested that new changes can involve minor and subtle measures like mailing an information draft to patients, or could be pretty much on a larger scale like conducting 15 hours of group counseling sessions.
She therefore added that even minor measures can effectively motivate kids to stop the use of tobacco.
Although rates of tobacco use have fallen from 2000 to 2011, former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Regina Benjamin announced teen smoking as an “epidemic” in March 2012.
