College campus tobacco-free policies: A systematic literature review

Background and Issues: Tobacco smoke exposure increases the risk of adverse health outcomes including cancer, heart and lung disease, and premature death. Young adults smoke at rates higher than any other age group and virtually all adult daily smokers began before age 26. In 2010, one in four college students reported past month smoking. Community college and part time students smoke at particularly high rates, 29% and 39.9%, respectively. Tobacco-free college campus policies have the potential to be high impact interventions to reduce smoking and secondhand smoke. Description: A comprehensive literature review was conducted using PubMed and GoogleScholar. Using American College Health Association guidelines as a framework, the state of the science on tobacco-free college campuses was summarized. Key words included tobacco, tobacco-free, smoke-free, smoking ban and college campus. Lessons Learned: Preliminary results indicate that most relevant studies focus on adoption of campus policies, with few examining issues related to policy implementation or compliance. The few studies that have evaluated outcomes of smoke or tobacco-free campus policies in Kentucky, North Carolina, and Canada have identified major issues with policy compliance.

Recommendations: Simply adopting a tobacco-free campus policy is not enough to change behaviors and ensure that the policy is effective. Policy implementation is an often ignored but critically important part of the policymaking process. It is important to understand which implementation strategies lead to high policy compliance. Future research is needed to determine best practices for adopting and implementing a tobacco-free campus policy to ensure the policy achieves desired outcomes.