TTURC Research on Tobacco Cessation in China
TTURC Researchers Marion Ceraso and Xiaodong Kuang conducted research into how to help Chinese smokers quit. Kuang was a UW grad student in mass-communication science while Ceraso is a researcher at the UW Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Their challenge was immense. Chinese citizens—mostly men—smoke a third of the world’s cigarettes, and experts estimate a million Chinese smokers die each year from their tobacco use.
But Ceraso and Kuang hoped the first step to turning the tide was to educate Chinese doctors on the dangers of tobacco use, how to treat it and the importance of leading by example. Barriers included a 50-percent smoking rate among Chinese doctors and cultural norms such as giving cigarettes as gifts.
Along with colleagues at the FuXing Hospital in Beijing and Inner Mongolia Hospital in Hohhot, Ceraso and Kuang conducted a baseline survey and focus groups among doctors and discovered that many view quitting smoking as a matter of will power, and that healthcare facilities don’t typically offer medications or coaching to help people quit. Doctors who accept cigarettes as gifts are less likely to treat their patients who smoke. And smoke-free air policies in many hospitals were not enforced.
Undaunted, the dynamic duo worked with colleagues in China and the U.S. to build culturally appropriate strategies for change.
These included:
- Educating physicians.
- Family and peer support for quitting.
- Replacing cigarettes with an alternative gift.
- Refusal-skills training.
- Linking nonsmoking with professionalism.
- Hospital cessation support and enforcement of smoke-free regulations.
They conducted a training workshop for physicians then test the strategies in real-world healthcare settings. Chinese health officials are working on a clinical practice guideline similar to the one in America.
