Abstract
Systematic reviews are suggesting possible global epidemic of water pipe smoking. Aim of the presentation is to reflect on the hypothesis that brief education about misconceptions surrounding water pipe could be one of the means to control prevalence of water pipe use.
The present situation of water pipe epidemiology will be explained with the support of recent empirical evidence and then surprising results of formative evaluation of czech school-based smoking prevention program for 7th grade students of elementary schools (N=202) will be discussed. One of the results was that change of intention to smoke water pipe was observed among students (p=0,001) but not the change of intention to smoke cigarettes (p=0,37) despite the fact that program was focused almost solely on cigarettes smoking.
Possible explanation for the effectiveness of brief education (5 min) could be in the fact that there are lot of myths surrounding the water pipe to begin with. Despite the fact that there is not enough of strong empirical evidence to support the proposed hypothesis, available data are suggesting potential for further research in this area.