Resumo

REYNALES-SHIGEMATSU, Luz Myriam; VAZQUEZ-GRAMEIX, Juan Humberto  e  LAZCANO-PONCE, Eduardo. Evidence from Global Health Professional Student Survey in Mexico 2006. Salud pública Méx [online]. 2007, vol.49, suppl.2, pp.s194-s204. ISSN 0036-3634.

OBJECTIVE: To asses the smoking prevalence, knowledge and attitudes towards tobacco use and role of future medical and dental health professionals in tobacco control. METHODS: GHPSS is a school based survey of third year student in the faculty related of Health Care. During 2006 we carried out the survey in public medical and dental schools in Mexico. SUDAAN software was used to compute standard errors of the estimates and produced 95% confidence intervals. RESULTS: A 33.3% and 43.6% of medical and dental students reported they are currently smokers. About 7-8 in 10 students reported that they thought health professionals should play a role in counseling patients about tobacco-cessation programs. CONCLUSION: A result indicates high smoking prevalence among medical and dental students and suggests a strong need for tobacco cessation training to help their patients to quit smoking.

Palavras-chave : tobacco consumption; health professionals; cessation training; Mexico.