Rationale
Preventing tobacco use among children and adolescents remains a major public health priority. Schools are a key setting for delivering interventions aimed at preventing smoking uptake, given their ability to reach large populations of young people during critical developmental periods.
The current Cochrane review, published in 2017, evaluated school-based programmes designed to prevent smoking initiation among school-aged children and adolescents. The review identified a large and diverse evidence base encompassing a range of approaches, including information-only programmes, social competence interventions, social influences interventions, and combinations of these strategies.
Since publication, substantial new evidence is likely to have emerged. In addition, patterns of nicotine use among young people have changed considerably, with increased uptake of electronic cigarettes and other vaping products in many countries. This update could consider broadening the scope to include interventions aimed at preventing vaping uptake and promoting vaping cessation among young people, alongside traditional smoking prevention approaches whilst remaining distinctive from this recent Cochrane review: Interventions to prevent or cease electronic cigarette use in children and adolescents.
Call
We are looking author teams to take on a new Cochrane review in this area.
Given the potential need to expand the scope beyond tobacco smoking prevention alone, as well as methodological advances since the last update of this review, a new protocol will be required. Author teams should carefully consider the appropriate scope, review question(s), and analytical framework needed to address contemporary patterns of nicotine use among children and adolescents. Teams are encouraged to present a clear rationale for any proposed inclusion of vaping prevention or vaping cessation interventions.
The successful team should demonstrate expertise in systematic review methods and ideally have experience in tobacco control, addiction, public health, adolescent health, behavioural interventions, educational interventions, or related fields. Given the likely breadth of intervention types, teams should also demonstrate an ability to manage complex interventions and diverse outcome measures.
Several authors from the current review have indicated that they may be willing to contribute to an update. Their inclusion in the updated review is entirely at the discretion of the successful author team.
Authors should provide a proposed analytical approach, including planned comparisons, outcome measures, subgroup analyses, and methods for addressing heterogeneity arising from differing intervention approaches, settings, and participant populations.
We particularly welcome applications from teams that include early career researchers and researchers based in low- and middle-income countries, recognizing the importance of developing capacity and ensuring diverse perspectives in evidence synthesis.
Authors must adhere to Cochrane’s Conflict of Interest policy and for this review we are looking for authors who have not received any tobacco or commercial nicotine industry funding (including consulting for/expert testimony).
Timeline: the team taking this on should be ready to begin work within the next quarter with a protocol produced by Q1 2027 and full review by Q1 2028.
What support is available?
There are no funds to pay authors to conduct these reviews. However, Cochrane can offer the following:
- Commissioning support. Working with the Commissioning Editor means expedited proposal acceptance and respond to queries throughout review production.
- Search support. For those who need it Cochrane information specialists can run the searches and (capacity dependent) may be able to use machine learning to reduce some of the screening burden.
- Support from Covidence. For priority intervention reviews, Cochrane can refer authors for Covidence premium support. This service involves support from an advisor within Covidence to facilitate data extraction and transfer (capacity dependent).
- Pre-submission support. If required, one of our Evidence Synthesis Development Editors can perform a pre-submission check about 4–6 weeks prior to submission. If you would like this service, you will need to request it several months before you intend on submitting and it will be provided on a first come, first serve, capacity basis.
- Cochrane Engage. Our online platform can be used to find volunteers for various aspects of the work including volunteer co-authors.
Application
To apply, please send an expression of interest to the Commissioning Editor (rparker@cochrane.org) by 31st March 2027 including:
- Proposal form [.docx]
- Analysis plan:
- Full list of summary of findings table outcomes
- Comparisons
- Subgroup analyses planned
- Sensitivity analyses planned
- Short description of suitability of the author team for the proposal – 300 words max.
Panel for assessment
- Commissioning Editor
- Deputy Editor-in-Chief
- Additional editorial staff and experts from the Cochrane Collaboration as required
Producing an impactful review
This review has been commissioned because we think the topic is important and we think there is sufficient new evidence to support a meaningful synthesis. But until we run the search we don’t know that the synthesis will be meaningful and impactful. If you run your search and discover that there isn't much evidence to synthesize, please reconnect with me and we will explore whether it is worth continuing with a full Cochrane systematic review or not. It may be that your work can be written up as a shorter piece of work for a different journal such as Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods.
