Smoking behaviors among people with disabilities in Korea

Abstract

Background: Most reports concerning smoking behaviors in people with disabilities have been from Western societies; knowledge of smoking behaviors in Asian countries, including Korea, is insufficient.

Objectives: This study investigates the smoking behaviors of people with a disability compared to the general population in Korea.

Methods: We compared the smoking behaviors of people with a disability with the general population by using datasets from the 2011 National Survey of Disabled People and an age- and sex-matched random sample from the 5th Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Random samples of people 18 years of age and older with disabilities (n = 5636) and of the general population were used (n = 5636). The main outcome measures include smoking behaviors by type, severity, and age at disability onset.

Results: People with a mental or physical impairment have higher current smoking rates (38.1% and 26.3%, respectively) than the general population (23.3%). In particular, current smokers with psychiatric impairment were more likely to smoke more than 20 cigarettes a day (61.2%). People with a disability, regardless of severity or age at onset, were less likely than the general population to have attempted to quit smoking.

Conclusions: Smoking behaviors differed according to the type of disability. These results suggest that interventions for smoking prevention and cessation need to be tailored according to disability characteristics.

Keywords: Disabled persons; Health care disparity; smoking.