Undergraduate support for university smoke-free and vape-free campus policies and student engagement: a quasi-experimental intervention

Abstract

Background

College campuses have policies restricting smoking/vaping on campus. Previous studies involving mostly European-American students showed smoking prevalence declines following implementation of such policies.

Objective

To evaluate a social media campaign promotive of stronger campus support for an existing campus no-smoking/no-vaping policy where most (∼75%) of the undergraduates were non-European-American. A demographically comparable university served as a no-intervention control.

Participants

Target was 200 random intercept surveys at each university during fall 2016, spring 2017. Of 800 respondents, 681 were undergraduates.

Methods

Baseline and post-intervention surveys assessed awareness of and support for campus-wide smoke-free/vape-free policies. Staged smoke-free/vape-free policy violations assessed students’ propensity to intervene in support of the policy.

Results

Respondent support for the no-smoking/no-vaping policy did not change.

Conclusions

The social media campaign and Policy Ambassadors program did not increase support for the campus no-smoking/no-vaping policy. Most (∼90%) respondents agreed that the campus no-smoking/no-vaping policy was important for public health.

Keywords:

• College
• public policy
• smoke-free/vape-free
• social marketing
• tobacco-control

Conflict of interest disclosure

The authors have no conflicts of interest to report. The authors confirm that the research presented in this article met the ethical guidelines, including adherence to the legal requirements of the USA and received approval from the UCLA and UC Irvine Institutional Review Boards . The funders played no role in the authors' analyses or conclusions.

Additional information

Funding

The intervention and evaluation activities described in this report were supported by a Smoke- and Tobacco-free Fellowship from the California Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program to the first author and by a grant from the UCLA Healthy Campus Initiative in support of the Policy Ambassadors Program.