This study was undertaken to determine the effect of school-based smoking prevention program on intention not to smoke, smoking-related attitudes and refusal self-efficacy among Grade 7 students of Poblacion Comprehensive National High School, Lakewood, Zamboanga del Sur. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) continues to recommend providing school-based prevention of diseases, particularly in high school, the stage of life with the most acceleration of onset rates. Pre and post interventional data were collected from one hundred seventy-six (176) respondents, all of whom were grade 7 students (42.61% males and 57.39% females). The respondents of this study were selected through purposive sampling. The intervention was a five-day school-based smoking prevention program where the World Health Organization (WHO) Manual was utilized as an educational tool guide for teachers during their one-hour MAPEH class. Before, one week and three months after the intervention, the respondents completed a questionnaire that examined their intention not to smoke, smoking-related attitudes and refusal self-efficacy. For intention not to smoke, majority of the students had strong intention not to smoke both before (90.9%) and after (89.8%) the intervention. For smoking-related attitudes, only 54% of the students had good anti-smoking attitude at the end of the study. McNemar Test was used for item analysis and only 6 out of 12 items had significant increase in the number of students with anti-smoking attitude. For refusal self-efficacy, only about half (50.6%) of the students had high refusal self-efficacy after the intervention. The study concluded that school-based smoking prevention program as conducted by the researcher is not effective on improving the students’ intention not to smoke, smoking-related attitudes and refusal self-efficacy among grade 7 students. Additional strategies are recommended.

Keyword: School-based Smoking prevention program Intention not to smoke Smoking related attitudes Refusal self-efficacy Grade 7