Density of tobacco advertising around schools.

Indonesia has the second highest smoking prevalence among adult males in the world, with over 61.4 million current smokers. However, there is no national regulation on outdoor tobacco advertising. >To assess the density of outdoor tobacco advertising around schools in Semarang City, Indonesia. We conducted geospatial analyses using buffer and hotspot analyses based on advertising and school data in ArcMap 10.6. We statistically tested the significance of different densities, including between 100 m and 100-300-m buffers from schools using Stata 15.1. We found a total of 3453 tobacco advertisements, of which 3026 (87%) were at least medium in size (1.3 m x l.9 m), and 2556 (74%) were within 300 m of schools. We also found hotspots with a 45% higher density of adverts within 100 m of schools (compared to within 100-300 m). A total of 378 schools (39%) were in these advertising hotspots. There was high density of outdoor tobacco advertising, with significant clusters in close proximity to schools in Semarang City. The policy implications of this are discussed.