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frequently within case notes. After a home visit, an advocate recorded the following on
an evaluation form:
Barriers:
•
Mom currently lives with other relatives, so the home is very crowded.
•
The child is subjected to ‘smokers,’ people smoke around the child,
although mom tries to encourage smokers to go outside.
In these types of situations, the presence of extended family members could impede
participation among parents who would like to follow the program’s recommendations.
As Figure 3 shows, statistics from the caseload support this hypothesis. Seven
percent of the high compliance children are exposed to cigarette smoke regularly, and all
of this smoke comes from the mother. In contrast, 25 percent of low compliance children
are exposed to their parents’ cigarette smoke. In other words, compared to the high
compliance category, children in the low compliance category are more than three times
as likely to be directly exposed to cigarette smoke by their parents.
However, the information on medium compliance families complicates the story.
Seven percent of these children are exposed to their parents’ smoke (equal to that of high
compliant children), however an extended family member exposes 33 percent of these
children to cigarette smoke. Hence, there is no difference between high and medium
compliance families in terms of exposure to parents’ smoke, but medium compliance
families are more likely to include an extended family member who smokes.
In sum, children in highly participant families are much less likely than others to
be exposed to any cigarette smoke, children of medium compliant parents are more likely
to be exposed to smoke from extended family members, and low participation parents are