• Eve M Nagler, Dhirendra N Sinha, Mangesh S Pednekar, Anne M Stoddard, Prakash C Gupta, Neha Mathur, Harry Lando, Mira Aghi, Laura Shulman Cordeira, K Viswanath, and Glorian Sorensen.
• Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Center for Community Based Research, 450 Brookline Ave, Boston, MA 02215, USA; Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, 677 Huntington Avenue-7th Floor, Boston, MA 02115, USA. Electronic address: eve_nagler@dfci.harvard.edu.
• Prev Med. 2015 May 1; 74: 24-30.

ObjectiveTobacco use within India has significant effects on the global burden of tobacco-related disease. As role models and opinion leaders, teachers are at the forefront of tobacco control efforts, yet little is known about their own tobacco use. This study examines the association between factors in the social environment and tobacco use among teachers in Bihar, India.MethodsThe study was based on the Bihar School Teachers' Study baseline survey. Seventy-two Bihar government schools (grades 8-10) were randomly selected for the study and all school personnel were invited to complete the survey in June/July in 2009 and 2010. We assessed the relation between social contextual factors and current smoking/smokeless tobacco use by fitting a series of logistic regression models.ResultsAfter controlling for clustering of teachers in schools and other covariates, our results showed teachers with one or more coworkers who used tobacco were twice as likely to be smokeless tobacco users as teachers with no co-workers who used tobacco. Teachers who reported rules prohibiting smoking at home were significantly less likely to smoke than teachers without such rules. Older male teachers also had significantly greater odds of smoking/using smokeless tobacco.ConclusionThese findings provide direction for future interventions targeting the social context.Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier Inc.

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