Bookmark & Share

Favorites	Google
Digg	Del.icio.us
Twitter	Facebook

>> More...

A study published online in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute suggests that personalized, proactive telephone counseling can significantly improve tobacco cessation rates among adolescent smokers, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports. With support from the National Institutes of Health, researchers from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center created a project involving 2,151 teenage smokers from 50 high schools in Washington state. For the project, half of the schools were randomized to an experimental intervention under which teens were invited to participate in nine confidential, personalized telephone counseling sessions designed to encourage them to quit. Students at the remaining 25 schools served as a control group and did not participate in a similar program. Upon completion of the study, 21.8 percent of all smokers in the counseling group had achieved continuous quitting for six months, compared to just 17.7 percent of those in the comparison group. The intervention also produced more immediate results, with smoking abstinence rates at the three-month, one-month and seven-day mark measuring 3.3 percent, 6.8 percent and 7.5 percent higher, respectively, among the counseling group than the comparison group. In addition, the researchers note that the one-month and seven-day quit rates among teenage smokers who received telephone counseling was roughly three times higher than those reported in nearly 50 previous adolescent smoking-cessation trials conducted over the past 20 years. The researchers hypothesize that the counseling program was so effective because it was proactive in approaching teens; was conducted over the phone, which allowed teens to decide the time and length of the conversation; and incorporated motivational interview techniques that encouraged changes as opposed to telling teens what to do. According to Washington State Department of Health statistics, 70,000 teens smoke in the state, with 45 new teens taking up the habit each day (Stang, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 10/12/09; Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center release, 10/12/09; Peterson et al., Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 10/12/09).