Nicotine & tobacco research : official journal of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco
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Comparative Study
Association Between Socioeconomic Status and Access to Care and Quitting Smoking With and Without Assistance.
Socio-economic disparities in smoking rates persist, in Ontario, despite public health care and universal tobacco control policies. Mechanisms for continuing disparities are not fully understood. Unequal access or utilization of assistance for cessation may contribute. The objective of this research was to use longitudinal data on smokers to examine the associations between socioeconomic status (SES) and access to care measures and assisted and unassisted quit attempts. ⋯ For most measures of SES there were no significant associations with either assisted or unassisted quitting adjusting for demographic and smoking history. Smokers who live in areas with the lowest ethnic concentration were most likely to use assistance as were smokers who visited their doctor and were advised to quit smoking. Interventions to increase the delivery of effective quitting methods in smokers living in areas with high ethnic concentrations and to increase physician compliance with asking and advising patients to quit may increase assisted quit attempts.
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Smoking individuals often have a romantic partner who also smokes. Social support from a partner is assumed to be beneficial for successful smoking cessation. To date, no study has examined daily support and smoking in dual-smoker couples jointly attempting to quit. The aim was to test the hypothesis that smokers cut down more on days with higher received and provided emotional and instrumental support. Men are expected to benefit more from support provision of their female partners than vice versa. ⋯ This study is the first to provide insights into the association between daily smoking and social support after a joint self-set quit attempt of dual-smoker couples using a dyadic intensive longitudinal approach. Received and provided emotional and instrumental support play a key role for one's own daily smoking in dual-smoker couples after a joint self-set quit date. Furthermore, support provided by women was related to less smoking in partners. Because smokers with a romantic partner who also smokes have lower quit success, it is remarkable that this study replicates findings from a prior study with smoker-nonsmoker couples showing the central role of social support after a quit attempt.
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Identifying youth at risk for future e-cigarette use is critical for informing prevention efforts. Prior research established measures of susceptibility to conventional cigarettes, and this study aimed to examine whether items adapted for e-cigarette susceptibility predicted subsequent e-cigarette use among never e-cigarette users. ⋯ More than a quarter of the sample who reported both a willingness to try e-cigarettes if offered by a best friend and anticipation of experimenting with e-cigarettes in the future went on to try e-cigarettes within the academic year, suggesting that targeting this group will be critical for preventing youth e-cigarette initiation. There were notable demographic differences between susceptible and non-susceptible youth, suggesting targeting e-cigarette prevention efforts to male students who have used other substances may be especially important for preventing future e-cigarette use. Research is needed to determine the most effective prevention strategies to reach susceptible youth.
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Hospital systems are adopting strict nicotine-free policies excluding hiring individuals who smoke, including residents for graduate medical training. This study was conducted to (1) determine medical schools' awareness of these policies, (2) awareness of their students' smoking behaviors, and (3) the smoking cessation programs that they provide. ⋯ This study draws attention to recent policies that preclude hiring medical students who smoke for post graduate (residency) training. Our study demonstrates a lack of appreciation of these policies by medical school administration in the United States. Our study also provides information on smoking rates of medical students, as well as the prevalence and use of smoking cessation programs available through schools of medicine. The study supports the need for medical schools to identify and aid students who smoke to become nicotine-free so that they can secure residency training positions.
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The study estimated the prevalence of unassisted quitting (ie, quitting without pharmacological aids or other interventions) among former smokers and identified the most common smoking cessation methods used by U.S. adult smokers who quit smoking between 2007 and 2011. Among long-term quitters, smoking-related behaviors and factors associated with using pharmacological methods and quitting unassisted were examined. ⋯ Unassisted quitting remains a much more common method for recent and long-term smoking cessation than use of pharmacological or nonpharmacological methods. Smokers may try different ways of quitting during the same quit attempt. Thus, population-based studies that investigate the use of particular methods while ignoring other ways of quitting may overestimate the benefits of certain methods for smoking cessation.