If, at first, you don’t succeed in quitting smoking, try, try again; just know that standard treatments generally work about the same as enhanced ones.
Among socioeconomically disadvantaged Wisconsin residents who called the Wisconsin Tobacco Quit Line and didn’t stay smoke-free, adding more treatment components like more counseling, more nicotine medication, and text message support didn’t robustly move the needle to help them quit on the second try.
The study included 1,316 participants with limited education, no insurance, or Medicaid insurance who were still smoking 3-6 months after receiving Quit Line support. They were randomized to receive standard Quit Line services—with or without add-on treatments.
It turned out that offering more medication, coaching calls, a text-message support program, or payments for participating in treatment, did not increase quit rates when compared with another round of standard Quit Line services, according to a UW-CTRI paper in JAMA Network Open.
“Overall, 12 percent quit smoking during a second round of treatment with the Quit Line,” said lead author and UW-CTRI Researcher Dr. Jesse Kaye. “We don’t know if this is more than would have quit on their own without being encouraged to complete an extra round of treatment, because there wasn’t a comparison group that was not offered Quit Line re-treatment. But it’s a pretty good quit rate for this population. The study highlights the potential importance of proactively trying to reconnect people in additional Quit Line treatment if they didn’t fully quit their first time.”
Dr. Danielle McCarthy, one of the Principal Investigators on the project, along with Dr. Michael Fiore, noted, “Findings from this study suggest that getting back into treatment may be helpful for people who continue smoking, and that adding more treatment the second time around is not necessarily more helpful. This has implications for how we design follow-up care for people who continue to smoke after Quit Line treatment.”
“We need new strategies to help the most vulnerable people in our society to quit smoking,” Kaye said. “We know the tobacco companies target them. Now, we need to continue to investigate how to tailor interventions to best help them quit smoking. Quit Lines can play an important role in helping to reduce disparities in smoking cessation for individuals with socioeconomic disadvantages.”