Research Note: Validated Screening Questions for Pediatric Secondhand Smoke Exposure
Good screening tools should be brief and accurate, leading to clinical actions that physicians and other practitioners are trained to perform. In a recent study, researchers identified two questions that could be included in a basic tobacco screener that would, with a high degree of certainty, indicate that children in the home are exposed to non-trivial amounts of cigarette smoke. Those questions were
- “During the past 30 days, did you smoke cigarettes at all?” and
- “Has anyone, including yourself, smoked tobacco in your home in the past 7 days?”.
Of particular interest is that children’s exposure to tobacco smoke was verified biochemically, which is to say, not through a carbon monoxide measure (for which there are other potential causes of a high reading) or through self-report, which is subject to recall and other response biases. Providers seeking advice on which questions to ask their patients could be directed to use these as they make systems change adjustments.
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