Search

Purpose: To summarize the reach, services offered, and cessation outcomes of the New York Quitline and compare with other state quitlines. Design: Descriptive study. Setting: Forty-five US states. Participants: State-sponsored tobacco cessation quitlines in 45 US states that provided complete data to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Quitline Data Warehouse (NQDW) for 24 quarters over 6 years (2010-Q1 through 2015-Q4). Intervention: Telephone quitlines that offer tobacco use cessation services, including counseling, self-help materials, and nicotine replacement therapy (NRT), to smokers at no cost to them. Measures: Percentage of adult tobacco users in the state who received counseling and/or free NRT from state quitlines (reach), services offered by state quitlines, and cessation outcomes among quitline clients 7 months after using quitline services. Analysis: Reach, services offered, and cessation outcomes for the New York Quitline were compared with similar measures for the other 44 state quitlines with complete NQDW data for all quarters from 2010 through 2015. Results: New York’s average annual quitline reach from 2010 through 2015 was 3.0% per year compared to 1.1% per year for the other 44 states examined. Conclusion: Although the New York Quitline was open fewer hours per week and offered fewer counseling sessions and a smaller amount of free NRT than most of the other 44 state quitlines, the New York Quitline had similar quit rates to most of those state quitlines.

Purpose: The ads from the first federally funded national tobacco education campaign, Tips From Former Smokers (Tips), considerably increased quitline calls nationwide. This study evaluates the effect of Tips on state-specific quitline calls. Design: Precampaign, during-campaign, and postcampaign comparison; regression modeling. Setting: All fifty states as well as the District of Columbia. Subjects: Calls to state quitlines. Intervention: Tips. Measures: Tips campaign exposure was measured by gross rating points (GRPs). Calls to quitline’s 1-800-QUIT-NOW were assigned to markets in each state based on their area codes. Analysis: Multivariate regression was used to assess the relationship between calls to state quitlines and media market-level Tips GRPs, while controlling for market and area code characteristics. Results: Nationally, every 100 Tips GRPs per week at the market level was associated with an average of 45 additional quitline calls in each area code (β = 44.65, p < .001). Tips GRPs were associated with significant increases in quitline calls in 46 states and the District of Columbia, of which 11 experienced effects significantly larger than the national average and 5 experienced significantly smaller effects. We were unable to detect statistically significant effects of GRPs on call volumes for four states. Graphically, call volumes in those states followed Tips GRPs. Conclusion: The Tips campaign significantly increased calls to quitlines for almost all the states. These findings underscore the effectiveness of national tobacco media campaigns for reaching state audiences.