Factors Associated with Smoking Cessation Among Quit SmartTM Participants

Introduction Population-based studies of smoking cessation programs indicate that, although initial quit rates are high, quit rates decline to approximately 15%-25% at one year. Communityand workplace-based interventions generally report quit rates of a similar magnitude, and some report rates as high as 36%. For comparison, the background rate of unassisted smoking cessation is estimated at approximately 7%-8%. Physician interventions that use nicotine gum as an aid to smoking cessation produce one-year quit rates of about 10%. Within managed care organizations, one-year smoking cessation rates as high as 30%-40% have been reported. One of several interventions used in multifactorial health education programs to promote smoking cessation, nicotine replacement therapy is efficacious for promoting and sustaining smoking cessation and is also a cost-effective method of treatment. Controlled studies have shown that quit rates for users of the nicotine patch are approximately double the quit rates for users of placebo. The Quit SmartTM smoking cessation program, developed by Robert H Shipley, PhD (founding director of the Duke Medical Center Stop Smoking Clinic), is a multifactorial health education program designed to promote smoking cessation among tobacco users. Quit SmartTM was implemented in 1998 as part of the health education program of the Kaiser Permanente Georgia Region (KPG). A pilot evaluation of the Quit SmartTM program was conducted for KPG’s quality improvement initiatives and addressed three questions: • How many participants were smoking when surveyed at 12 months after completing the program? • How many participants abstained from tobacco use for the entire 12-month period after completing the program? • What behavioral and environmental factors promoted or inhibited the likelihood of attaining these two endpoints? This article presents results of the pilot evaluation.