Special Populations
Background
- Not much evidence for a stand-alone effect of telephone counseling (TC) for teens and pregnant smokers.
- Spontaneous quit rate for teens and pregnant smokers, however, are very different.
Recommendations for Teens
- Need for quitline service for teens, because:
- Teens want to quit smoking
- Teens are calling quitlines like adults
- Short-term outcomes for TC appear encouraging.
- Potential quitline effect for teen smokers as it is promoted as part of a comprehensive tobacco control program.
Recommendations (Cont.)
- Future TC programs focusing on teens should be in the context of an experimental design.
- Funders should support demonstration projects designed to evaluate the overall effect of a teen quitline (i.e., not just the proactive counseling part). These can be conducted in states where quitlines aren’t currently available.
(Tobacco Co.’s influence—teen quitline only!)
Research Questions
- What should a teen intervention look like?
- Combination of multiple modalities
- Provide more booster sessions
- Etc.
- Should we intervene only with older teens and "watchfully wait” for younger teens until they become a little older?
Recommendations for. Pregnant Smokers
- Existing quitlines should use special counseling protocols for pregnant smokers, because their situation is unique and tailored interventions are more likely to be effective.
Recommendations (Cont.)
- Focus not only on baby, but on woman herself
- Put quitline number on pregnancy test packages
Research Questions
- Can quitline increase the frequency of intervention at physician’s office (e.g., physicians’ counseling), which has been demonstrated efficacious in previous meta-analyses?
- What is the most cost-effective way of reaching pregnant smokers (e.g. media campaign, provider referrals, linkages with services)?