Pictorial health warnings on cigarette packs and the impact on women

Abstract

OBJECTIVETo analyze the association between the pictorial graphic health warnings on cigarette packs and their impact on intention to quit smoking among women.METHODSPopulation-based cross-sectional study among 265 women daily smokers in the State of Paraná in 2010. The sample size was calculated using cluster sampling. Participants were asked whether they had seen any pictorial graphic health warnings in the past 30 days, whether these warnings made them think about quitting, and intensity of these thoughts. The data was analyzed using logistic regression and the independent variables included age, educational attainment, whether they had children, whether they had attempted to quit smoking in the past 12 months, age of smoking initiation, number of cigarettes smoked per day, their town of residence, and how soon after waking do they smoke their first cigarette.RESULTSParticipants (91.7%) reported seeing the pictorial graphic health warnings in the past 30 days. Women with elementary education or below and women with some/complete high school education were more likely to think about quitting smoking after seeing the pictorial graphic health warningsthan women with higher education (OR = 4.85; p = 0.0028 and OR = 2.91; p = 0.05), respectively). Women who attempted to quit smoking in the past 12 months were more likely to think about quitting than women who had not (OR = 2.49; p = 0.001). Quit attempts within the last 12 months were associated with intensity of these thoughts (OR = 2.2; p = 0.03).CONCLUSIONSResults show an association between pictorial graphic health warnings and intent to quit smoking among women with warnings having a greater impact among women with less education and who had attempted to quit smoking within the past year. Tobacco control strategies should be implemented across all groups of women regardless of their educational attainment.

Does Segmentation Really Work? Effectiveness of Matched Graphic Health Warnings on Cigarette Packaging by Race, Gender and Chronic Disease Conditions on Cognitive Outcomes among Vulnerable Populations

“…First, there are a limited number of studies to test the FDA’s GHW labels to investigate the segmentation effect on cognitive outcomes among vulnerable populations. There are existing studies about interaction effects within different sub-populations, however these studies have primarily focused on the overall effects of GHW exposure without considering the issue of matching (Bittencourt, Person, Cruz, & Scarinci, 2013; Guillaumier, Bonevski, & Christine, 2015; Guillaumier, Bonevski, Paul, Durkin, & D’Este, 2014; Mead, Cohen, Kennedy, Gallo, & Latkin, 2016; Trasher et al, 2012). Our study looked at GHWs matched with the population, so that it can more clearly demonstrate segmentation effect.…”

Predictors of past quit attempts and duration of abstinence among cigarette smokers

“…This study provided the first evidence from an observational study that pictorial warnings on cigarette packs are effective in promoting quit attempts and helping smokers to quit smoking [ 40 ]. Health warnings in general, and pictorial ones in particular play an important role in the intention to quit smoking and quit attempts [ 41 ]. Pictorial warnings effectively increased intentions to quit, forgoing cigarettes, quit attempts, and successfully quitting smoking over 4 weeks [ 40 ].…”

Did the introduction of pictorial health warnings increase information seeking for smoking cessation?: Time-series analysis of Google Trends data in six countries

“…PHW can have a different impact in different subgroups of the population, in terms of age, gender and educational group [33][34][35] . Unfortunately, with Google Trends data, we could not distinguish between such subgroups and we might therefore have missed specific effects for some subgroups.…”