Title

Evaluating the effectiveness of a ‘Tobacco Monitor’ App in reporting violations of tobacco policy in the community

Authors

Mehta Vini¹, Hegde S Sahana², Kakodkar Pradnya³, Kumbhalwar Abhishek⁴ & Mathur Ankita⁵

Affiliation

¹Department of Public Health Dentistry, People’s College of Dental Sciences & Research Centre, Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh; ²Department of Public Health Dentistry, Dr. D.Y. Patil Dental College and Hospital, Dr. D.Y. Patil Vidyapeeth, Pune; ³Dr. D.Y. Patil Vidyapeeth, Pune; ⁴Department of Public Health Dentistry, D.Y. Patil Dental School, Charholi, Lohegaon, Pune; 5 STAT SENSE, India.

Email

Email: vinip.mehta@gmail.com

Article Type

Research Article

Date

December 26, 2020; Revised February 20, 2020; Accepted February 27, 2020, Published February 28, 2021

It is of interest to evaluate the effectiveness of the “Tobacco Monitor” app in reporting violations of tobacco policy in the community. Hence, a study was conducted amongst the first and second-year undergraduate students of health science colleges of a University. Students were asked to register complaints related to tobacco violations on the tobacco monitor app. Registered complaints were verified by the National Forum for Tobacco Eradication (NFTE) and descriptive statistics were used in reporting the results. A total of 208 complaints on tobacco violation were registered through the Tobacco Monitor app, 163 valid complaints were identified and 45 reports were found invalid. 163 verified valid complaints by NFTE were transferred to the Non-Communicable Diseases (NCD) Cell, Maharashtra, India. It should be noted that anti-tobacco laws and national policies help to curb the menace of the tobacco epidemic to an extent. However, robust reporting and sustainable enforcement measures are required in implementing tobacco legislation effectively. We also report that youth are comfortable in using the Tobacco Monitor app for reporting violations on tobacco.

Keywords

Tobacco monitor app; violations; tobacco; smart phone apps.

Citation

Vini et al. Bioinformation 17(2): 306-312 (2021)

Edited by

P Kangueane

ISSN

0973-2063

Publisher

Biomedical Informatics

License

This is an Open Access article which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. This is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.