Survey on smoking-related knowledge, attitudes and behavior of teachers across China.

Objective To describe the smoking-related knowledge, attitudes and behavior of teachers across Chine and explore tobacco specific control measures. Methods Two-stage simple random sampling was used to select teachers for face-to-face survey in one city at the provincial city, one at the prefecture level and one at the county level (the town) in each of the 31 provinces (autonomous regions, municipalities) and Xinjiang Construction and Production Legion. Results This survey indicated a smoking rate of 19.6% among teachers with a current smoking rate of 16.0%. The smoking rate and current smoking rate were 50.2% and 40.9% among the male teachers, respectively, while 1.1% and 0.8% among the female teachers. 81.4% smoking teachers reported that they smoked during working hours. 48.1% teachers reported smoking in the present of their students. Teachers, smoking teachers particularly, did not understand all the harmful aspects of smoking and passive smoking, and had misconceptions about the nature of tobacco. 87.8% teachers supported 100% smoke-free campuses. A majority of teachers (81.0%) still gave a tobacco control education only on harms of smoking and only 38.1% of them had taught students how to refuse tobacco. Conclusion A systematic promotion should be implemented among teachers to raise awareness of harms of smoking and passive smoking and to improve their tobacco control skills. Meanwhile, smoking should be forbidden in schools completely to create smoke-free campuses for students and teachers.