Does tailoring matter? The impact of a tailored guide on ratings and short-term smoking-related outcomes for older smokers

Abstract

There is new evidence that smokers of all ages benefit from cessation of smoking. Although most older smokers, like younger smokers, prefer to quit on their own, at the time this project was started, there were no materials or programs targeted to older smokers. Using the literature, focus groups with older smokers and a national survey of older smokers, we created Clear Horizons, a self-help guide for older smokers, and a telephone counseling protocol tailored to the needs of older smokers (age 50-74). Smokers were recruited from around the United States and assigned randomly to a control guide, Clearing the Air, Clear Horizons alone or Clear Horizons and two counselor calls. Follow-up of nearly 2000 smokers was conducted by telephone 3, 6, 12 and 24 months after delivery of the self-help guides. This report focuses primarily on results at 3 months because that was the measurement for reactions to the interventions. At the 3 month interview, those in the tailored interventions rated their guides more highly than did those in the control group. They also read more of their guides and were more likely to reread them. Quit rates were significantly higher among smokers who received a combination of the tailored guide and telephone counseling. At 3 months, the combination of the guide and telephone counseling was most effective in helping smokers to quit. By 12 months, both the tailored guide alone and the tailored guide and calls groups had higher quit rates than the control guide but were not statistically different from one another.

Immediate and short-term impact of a brief motivational smoking intervention using a biomedical risk assessment: The Get PHIT trial

“…To assess self-effi cacy, participants were asked how confi dent they were that they could quit smoking for good, ranging from " not at all " to " extremely " confi dent on a 5-point Likert scale Orleans et al, 1991 ;Rimer & Orleans, 1994 ). Perceived severity and perceived likelihood for each outcome described above also were rated on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from " not at all " to " extremely.…”

Quitlines in North America: Evidence Base and Applications

“…20 Variability has been found in results for individual applications of proactive calls. Efficacy has been demonstrated when proactive telecounseling is used as the primary intervention [21][22][23][24][25] and to augment hospital initiated interventions for cardiac patients 26,27 or general hospitalized patients. 28,29 There seems to be a dose response effect, with multiple calls producing higher abstinence relative to a single call.…”

Translating Cholesterol Guidelines Into Primary Care Practice: A Multimodal Cluster Randomized Trial

“…During the past decade a great deal of quality improvement and guideline implementation research has been performed regarding other CHD risk factors, including smoking cessation, [31][32][33][34] physical activity, 35,36 weight loss for obesity, [37][38][39] hypertension control, [40][41][42] and diabetes control, [43][44][45] that may inform future research on where efforts for improved cholesterol management should be focused. We believe that by using the lessons learned from our study and the implications from other CHD risk factor studies, we can make the following recommendations.…”