An Evaluation of the Impact of a Multicomponent Stop Smoking Intervention in an Irish Prison

Andrea Bowe, Louise Marron, John Devlin and Paul Kavanagh
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Andrea Bowe: Health Intelligence Unit, Strategic Planning and Transformation, Health Service Executive, Dublin, Ireland
Louise Marron: Department of Public Health, Health Service Executive, Dr. Steevens’ Hospital, Dublin, Ireland
John Devlin: Irish Prison Service Irish, IDA Business Park, Ballinalee Road, Longford, Ireland
Paul Kavanagh: Health Intelligence Unit, Strategic Planning and Transformation, Health Service Executive, Dublin, Ireland

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 22, 1-11

Abstract: The disproportionately high prevalence of tobacco use among prisoners remains an important public health issue. While Ireland has well-established legislative bans on smoking in public places, these do not apply in prisons. This study evaluates a multi-component tobacco control intervention in a medium security prison for adult males in Ireland. A stop-smoking intervention, targeting staff and prisoners, was designed, implemented, and evaluated with a before-and-after study. Analysis was conducted using McNemar’s test for paired binary data, Wilcoxon signed rank test for ordinal data, and paired T-tests for continuous normal data. Pre-intervention, 44.3% ( n = 58) of the study population were current smokers, consisting of 60.7% of prisoners ( n = 51) and 15.9% of staff ( n = 7). Post-intervention, 45.1% of prisoners ( n = 23/51) and 100% of staff ( n = 7/7) who identified as current smokers pre-intervention reported abstinence from smoking. Among non-smokers, the proportion reporting being exposed to someone else’s cigarette smoke while being a resident or working in the unit decreased from 69.4% ( n = 50/72) pre-intervention to 27.8% ( n = 20/72) post-intervention ( p < 0.001). This multicomponent intervention resulted in high abstinence rates, had high acceptability among both staff and prisoners, and was associated with wider health benefits across the prison setting.

Keywords: tobacco control; prisoner health; multi-component intervention (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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