Awareness and support for anti-tobacco policies among health professional students in Pakistan: findings from the Global Health Professional Students Survey, 2011

BACKGROUND: Health professional (HP) students may have an important role in controlling future tobacco use of their patients, and public at large. It is important to understand their existing level of awareness and support for national anti-tobacco policies. We thus aim to explore Pakistani HP students’ existing attitudes towards national anti-tobacco policy and examine factors associated with lack of awareness, and support amongst them. METHODS: Secondary data analysis of the Global Health Professional Students Survey, Pakistan, 2011 was performed. Study population included 4,235 health professional students enrolled in third year of graduate level HP programs. The policy support metrics were developed using six questions from the survey. Univariate and multivariate analyses were conducted to analyze association between HP students’ awareness, and support for anti-tobacco policy (outcome variables), and various socio-demographic, attitudinal, and knowledge related factors. Descriptive statistics are reported as proportions, and results of logistic regression analysis were reported as odds ratios with 95% confidence interval. RESULTS: Overall, among HP students, 10.8% (n = 391) were current smokers, and 26.7% (n = 965) of them were cigarette experimenters. Almost half, (46.1%, n = 1666) of the HP students did not have an awareness of the official policy banning tobacco use in their school buildings and clinics; and only one in ten (9.4%, n = 338) of them did not support anti-tobacco policies. Students were less likely to be aware if they had second hand exposure at home/work (OR = 0.73, 95% CI (0.57-0.92), p-value <0.01). Furthermore, students who were current smokers (OR = 0.21, 95% CI (0.08-0.56), or cigarette experimenters (OR = 0.42, 95% CI (0.26-0.70), p-value <0.01), were least likely to support anti-tobacco policies. CONCLUSION: We found that HP students lack awareness of anti-tobacco policies; and were less likely to support such efforts if they were current smokers. These findings may help in understanding existing perceptions of the future care givers in Pakistan. Future anti-tobacco efforts and HP training programs may target the smoking HPs to enhance their full support in this regard. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13011-015-0001-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.