Knowledge attitude and practices of smoking habits among transgender living in Chennai city

Abstract

Smoking is highly prevalent among transgender persons and contributes to health disparities. Many studies in the past 20 years have documented that transgender individuals smoke at rates that exceed the general population; yet, there have been few reports of smoking cessation interventions targeting this population. Stress, patronage of bars and clubs, and higher instances of alcohol use among the transgender community contribute to higher smoking rates. This study aimed to determine the knowledge attitude and practices of smoking habits among transgender living in Chennai city. Cross-sectional questionnaire study involving 100 transgender of Chennai City, Tamil Nadu to assess the smoking habits for an extended period of 20 days in November 2017. The study involved smoking habits, using of pan and Hukkah, oral hygiene and dental visits. All the obtained data was entered on Microsoft excel sheet and analysed using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS, IBM, USA) version 20. From these results, it shows that 45% were not interested in controlling smoking, 44% were agreed that tobacco companies were using them to use the tobacco products , 65.1% did not care about the health warnings in the cigarette packets, 71% have not visited doctors to quit smoking , 69.4% were not aware of oral gum and bone problems because of smoking. Smoking habit among transgenders is more compared to others in Chennai city. Based on the results, transgenders have a high prevalence of Smoking habits, and it is recommended to conduct Smoking cessation programs must frequently be conducted to improve the health of a vulnerable subpopulation and to reduce the health illness by creating awareness on Smoking habit and its consequences.