Background: Smoking remains the major preventable cause of death worldwide, especially cancer-relateddeath. Evidence clearly indicates that tobacco-related morbidity and mortality is reduced by smoking cessation.Pharmacists are well-positioned to provide tobacco cessation services an involvement of pharmacists in smokingcessation is encouraged by several organizations. While Indonesia’s prevalence of smoking is in the first rank inAsian countries, none of the pharmacy schools in Indonesia are currently offering tobacco-related courses in theirexisting curricula at present. Our study aimed to develop and to evaluate the effectiveness of tobacco education(TE) for pharmacy students in Indonesia. Materials and Methods: A 6-hour TE was developed and evaluatedusing pre-test/post-test with control group design. A total of 137 fifth-year pharmacy students at Gadjah MadaUniversity (GMU), Yogyakarta, were chosen as an intervention group while a total of 105 fifth-year students ofIslamic University of Indonesia, (UII) served as the control group. Knowledge, perceived-role, self-efficacy, andability to perform counseling using the 5A’s framework were evaluated. Results: A significant improvement (P <0.001) in knowledge, perceived-role, and self-efficacy was found in the intervention group but not in the controlgroup. In addition, we revealed that 89.7% of the intervention group were able to perform counseling using5A’s. Conclusions: The developed TE significantly improved student knowledge, perceived-rolse, self-efficacy,and created an ability to perform cessation counseling. Integration of TE education in curricula of Indonesianpharmacy schools nation-wide should be encouraged.
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