An ecological perspective to adolescent smoking: Study in Iran

It is clear that for some young people, cigarette smoking significantly, and negatively, alters their lives. To curb the rise of adolescent smoking and help this group in the complex decisions that they face during adolescence, there is an essential need for health education programmes to be grounded in the reality of young people’s circumstances and the cultural, social and political environment that play a more complex and active role within them. This aim will be based on the better understanding of the complexities of adolescent environment, how adolescents perceive risk, and what factors contribute to their vulnerability to smoking behaviour.This study developed an ecological perspective to take into account for observed associations of smoking among Iranian adolescents. The components of the perspective are based on available research evidence together with pre-existing ecological models of health which in turn applied for data collection. The original conceptual framework, however, remained open to modification throughout the study in order to set out a more evidence-based, holistic approach to understanding smoking among young people in Iran.