Promoting the health of company employees is one of the fundamental tasks of occupational medicine. At Daimler Chrysler’s Untertürkheim site in Stuttgart, Germany, 600 firstyear and second-year apprentices undergoing technical vocational training formed the target group for programmes to stop smoking in 2002 and 2003. In 2002, 22 % of the apprentices took part in the first campaign, “Smoke-free 2002”. The smoking abstinence rate of the participants was 11 % after 18 months. In 2003, the company offered a group intervention programme to stop smoking (“Smokefree in 10 steps”). Only 2 % of the smoking apprentices accepted this offer. 6 months after the end of the programme no participant of this group was still abstinent. Therefore, for apprentices, a mass-media campaign with intensive coordinated support from the corporation is preferable to group intervention.
