, 2010) Online advertising can be a helpful

, 2010). Online advertising can be a helpful Tofacitinib baldness adjunct to other advertising channels for recruiting smokers into online cessation programs (Graham, Milner, Saul, & Pfaff, 2008; McCausland et al., 2011), alth
In 2010, more than half-a-million U.S. smokers called a state telephone quitline for information or help quitting smoking (North American Quitline Consortium [NAQC], 2011). In fact, smokers are 4 times more likely to use a quitline than face-to-face cessation counseling (Kaufman, Augustson, Finney-Rutten, & Davis, 2010; McAfee, Sofian, Wilson, & Hindmarsh, 1998). Quitlines also have the potential to reach underserved populations��for example, the elderly, persons living in rural areas, African Americans, and persons of lower socioeconomic status��populations that often have limited access to in-person cessation treatments (Lichtenstein, Zhu, & Tedeschi, 2010; NAQC, 2009).

Quitline counseling is both clinically effective and cost-effective (Abrams, Graham, Levy, Mabry, & Orleans, 2010; CDC, 2004, 2007; Fiore et al., 2008; Lichtenstein et al., 2010; McAfee, 2007; NAQC, 2009; Stead, Perera, & Lancaster, 2006; Zhu et al., 2002). The U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) Clinical Practice Guideline Treating Tobacco Use and Dependence in both 2000 (Fiore et al., 2000) and the 2008 Update (Fiore et al., 2008) reported that quitline counseling was significantly more effective than minimal interventions. This collective evidence led the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in 2004 to establish a national smoking cessation quitline network linking state quitlines via a single portal��1�C800-QUIT-NOW.

In the United States in 2010, all state quitlines (including the District of Columbia, Guam, and Puerto Rico) offered counseling and 39 states offered free cessation medications (NAQC, 2011) with nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) being the most common. Other services include quit guides and various community and eHealth resources. While there is evidence that free cessation medication increases quitline calls (McAfee, 2007) and may boost cessation outcomes (Fiore et al., 2008; Hughes, Peters, & Naud, 2011), little is known about which pharmacotherapy strategies (e.g., length of treatment, combination vs. single agent) will optimize cessation outcomes when offered as part of quitline treatment.

It is vital to determine the optimal constituents of quitline interventions because of their potential reach (Campbell, Lee, Haugland, Helgerson, & Harwell, 2008). Meta-analyses of telephone counseling reported in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews showed that increased counseling intensity (more proactive calls) only modestly and inconsistently boosts abstinence outcomes (Stead et al., 2006; cf. Carlin-Menter et al., 2011). Cilengitide Because of these mixed findings for quitline counseling intensity, the surest route to enhancing quitline effectiveness may be to optimize adjuvant pharmacotherapies.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>