Speech and Hearing Intervention in Children from a Public School of Porto Alegre: Prevention of Smoking

Introduction: Children and adolescents, when start to smoke, have a high risk of becoming tobacco dependent, often for lifetime. Several studies show that young people start smoking in increasingly younger ages, and the primary prevention of consumption must be installed increasingly earlier.

Objectives: This study aims to report a speech and hearing therapy conducted with children in a public school of Porto Alegre, Brazil, focusing on smoking prevention.

Methods: A cross-sectional, with a randomly selected sample, developed with children in the 1st year of elementary school in a public school in the city of Porto Alegre, Brazil. As an intervention, the story of "The cigarette and the Ant" was told using pedagogical techniques for setting the given information. After the intervention, children received green cards and red cards representing yes and no, respectively. The children then answered questions about the past content.

Results: A total of 40 children participated in the intervention, mean age was 6.7 years. About 67.5% were male and 32.5% female children. As for the questions at the end of the intervention, students had 100% success in the questionnaire.

Conclusion: With this study, it can be seen that an early intervention along with the school can be a primary tobacco use prevention. It should be noted that the results obtained in the questions may have given by the short time in which the information had been passed, and time when the questions were asked.