Abstract:
The study aimed to investigate parental knowledge of tobacco effects on health and parental perceptions on tobacco control measures at households in Dhaka city, Bangladesh. Out of 1436 tobacco-using parents, a total of 400 participants were selected for the cross-sectional survey using a multi-stage probability sampling. Overall knowledge and perceptions of parents were scored. Simple and multiple logistic regressions were performed. There were 19.8% of parents who had good knowledge about health effects of tobacco and 40.8% had positive perception on home initiatives of tobacco control measures respectively. The study revealed that knowledge of overall tobacco effects on health (AOR = 20.92, 95% CI = 2.60–167.83), asthma (AOR = 0.29, 95% CI = 0.17–0.49), infertility (AOR = 0.43, 95% CI = 0.24–0.77) and pre-eclampsia (AOR = 0.36, 95% CI = 0.14–0.90) were significantly increased the odds of parents good knowledge. Whereas parental perceptions indicate that living in the joint family was positively associated with controlling tobacco use (AOR = 3.10, 95% CI = 1.88–5.13). It suggests that health education programs need to be developed to improve parental awareness on the adverse health effects of tobacco use at households.
