Teenage smoking

Health education and promotion in secondary schools is generally under-resourced because of competing pressures on teachers to deliver the core national curriculum. School nurses are well placed to work with teachers in providing such programmes in the school setting. However, for their role to be effective there is a need to ensure that they are informed by research-based knowledge of how young people make decisions about their own health. This research in Norfolk examined decision making about tobacco use amongst 13-18 year olds and contextualised young peoples’ attitudes to smoking within a study of attitudes to health risk behaviours generally. Findings indicate a complex set of biopsychosocial factors which interact over a long maturation period and challenge the presumptions adults make about why young people do – or do not – decide to smoke tobacco.