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AbstractCigarette smoking is often established during adolescence when other health‐related risk behaviors tend to occur. The aim of the study was to further investigate the hypothesis that risky health behaviors tend to cluster together and to identify distinctive profiles of young adolescents based on their smoking habits. To explore the idea that smoking behavior can predict membership in a specific risk profile of adolescents, with heavy smokers being more likely to exhibit other risk behaviors, we reanalyzed the data from the 2014 Health Behaviour in School‐Aged Children Italian survey of about 60,000 first‐ and third‐grade junior high school (JHS) and second‐grade high school (HS) students. A Bayesian approach was adopted for selecting the manifest variables associated with smoking; a latent class regression model was employed to identify smoking behaviors among adolescents. Finally, a health‐related risk pattern associated with different types of smoking behaviors was found. Heavy smokers engaged in higher alcohol use and abuse and experienced school failure more often than their peers. Frequent smokers reported below‐average academic achievement and self‐rated their health as fair/poor more frequently than nonsmokers. Lifetime cannabis use and early sexual intercourse were more frequent among heavy smokers. Our findings provide elements for constructing a profile of frequent adolescent smokers and for identifying behavioral risk patterns during the transition from JHS to HS. This may provide an additional opportunity to devise interventions that could be more effective to improve smoking cessation among occasional smokers and to adequately address other risk behaviors among frequent smokers.

Background: The aim of this research is to update the trend in overweight (including obesity) prevalence among Italian adolescents, evaluating possible differences by age and gender, and analyzing their relationships with socioeconomic status, between 2002 and 2014. Methods: The present study is based on data from the Italian HBSC study at four time points (2002, 2006, 2010 and 2014), which involved 15035 adolescents, aged 11-13-15 (7540 boys and 7495 girls)Results: Gender and age were associated with the occurrence of overweight. In all surveys, boys had a higher prevalence of excess weight compared to girls (p<0.001), but only among girls there was a significant increasing trend (from 11.2% in 2002 to 13.3% in 2014). From 2002 to 2014, the risk of being overweight was inversely associated with the economic level of the family, for both genders and all age groups. Conclusions: Data collected between 2002 and 2014 in Italy showed a low overall increase in prevalence of obesity and overweight and an inverse association between SES and obesity in all age groups and in both genders. These findings suggest that concerted, multi-sectorial, efforts are needed in Italy, in combination with a sound political will, focused on reducing social inequality associate.