Brief Interventions

This study by Naughton et al. (2014) was conducted to identify the effectiveness of the iQuit program, a self-help program supported by text messaging, as an adjunct to smoking cessation education offered in the primary care setting. The authors report smoking cessation offered in the primary care setting varies widely but research showed the added option of a self-help program for patients produces a cessation rate of as much as twice the rate of those patients who were given only in- office education (Naughton et al.).

Of the roughly 42 million adults in the US that use tobacco, nearly 69% of smokers want to quit and more than 42% of those wishing to quit will make the attempt through various methods(1). These methods range from the "cold turkey" method, nicotine replacement therapy, behavioural therapy and even medicine. Each method has it's unique strengths and weaknesses as well as varying success rates. There are many reasons to quit and many ways in which to do so, either with methods that involve slowly weaning off of nicotine, like gums and patches from replacement therapy, to nicotine-free methods which require support from various sources.

CVS is the first the first national pharmacy chain store to ban tobacco and focus on the health and well-being of its patients and customers (Drell, 2014). This is a nationwide initiative, however, it doesn’t immediate solve the problem, but it is a step in the right direction. In light of CVS’s removal of all tobacco products from its shelves, the drugstore chain plans to offer its customers robust smoking cessation programs (Drell, 2014). The target public is the heavy tobacco users—the age range differs but it includes both men and women.

In 1964, thousands of smokers quit in response to the publication of the Report on Smoking and Health and multiple public education campaigns followed. Early behavior changes in 1970s and 1980s were focused on public education and oriented in health education interventions. These campaigns were modeled with health beliefs and theories. There was an emphasis on raising awareness of the harms of unhealthy behaviors versus the benefits of behavior changes. Doctor-patient relationship was a powerful part of health education at this time. In the mid 1980s, the stages of change model shifted from individual to population intervention. These models had a lasting effect.

In the United States, smoking cigarettes is the number one preventable cause of morbidity and death (Bergen, 1999), and accounts for $300 Billion in health care costs and economic productivity loss (Jamal, 2015). While the national smoking rate is 16.8% (CDC, 2016), specific demographics are more susceptible to developing smoking habits: people who live below the poverty line (10.9% higher), disabled or with a limitation (6.2% higher), and males (4.7% higher) (Agaku, 2014).

Rain in a Dry Land is a documentary about two Somalian Bantu families who are given the opportunity to relocate to the United States in 2004 for a new start after living ten years in a Kenyan refugee camp. These families had to flee their homes to escape the constant warfare that had plagued their area; as a result they ended up in a refugee camp. The one family had their two daughters lost to them because of the attack on their people in their village. These two families enter America with some knowledge about the country, but no actual experience, therefore these people enter as Muslim, immigrants and of a completely different culture than Americans are used to. The two families have to learn to work in America, to school their children

Tobacco use; despite efforts to curb it, have remained unsatisfactory high. The ACA aims to improve this by making smoking cessation programs affordable or free in health care policies; by funding local communities sponsoring outreach programs aimed at at-risk populations, and media campaigns graphically illustrating the dangers tobacco use [3].

Over the past decade, text messaging has become one of the most affordable and easily accessible form of communication. Along with the earlier mentioned growing number of young adults using tobacco products. These can go hand in hand due to the fact that text messaging can be used to promote healthy behavior to a huge amount of the U. S. population. Around 98% of the population has text messaging on their phones. thus a text based smoking cessation program can not only be cost effective, but can also provide interactive personalized counseling to a young college student. Text messaging smoking cessation programs can make this one-on-one counseling much easier since of the 70% of smokers that want to quit, only 51% actually meet with a physician to seek that type of help to attempt to quit.

And results from previous studies indicate that different groups of smokers would have different outcomes in health, and health disparities in smoking cessation exist among smokers currently. Researchers investigate these disparities by race, gender, socioeconomic status, insurance status and so on. Racial/ethnic health disparities is one of the major disparities that researchers found. Compared with non-Hispanic Whites, racial/ethnic minorities are less likely to quit smoking successfully. 1-3. In particular, smokers who are African Americans and Hispanics/Latinos are less likely to be provided advices about smoking cessation by health care providers than non-Hispanic Whites,1 and Hispanic/Latino smokers face more barriers when they attempt to quit smoking.2 Barriers to quitting smoking not only decrease the success rate of smoking cessation for smokers, but it also aggravate disparities among smokers. Undoubtedly, smoking cessation services and advices that provided by health care providers help smokers to quit smoking more successful compared with smokers who rely smoking cessation on themselves. And lack of advice from health care providers increase the failure rate of smoking

Maria claimed to be a “social drinker” when she came to the clinic for help. After performing the NIAAA to prescreen Maria, she was found to need further screening. An AUDIT was performed

The leading cause of death in the county is heart disease followed by cancer, and both of these can be linked to smoking or second-hand smoke exposure. Methods to move toward HP2020’s goal will involve encouraging and assisting smokers to quit. The Community Guide is a free resource to help guide communities to choose programs and policies for cessation. These programs are evidenced based, research-tested and include suggestions such as increasing the unit based price on tobacco products and how this would help to decrease use, increase the number of those who quit, decrease the number of those who try cigarettes the first time and decrease the tobacco related morbidity and mortality. The research suggest the improved health effects are proportional to the size of the price increase, also noted to be effective in prevention is mass reach communication or advertising regarding the dangers of smoking and also techniques for quitting (The Community guide, n.d.). Counseling is noted to be effective alone and with the use of medications and is available through programs like the toll-free quitline in South Carolina. Healthcare professional are urged to screen patients for use of tobacco and provide cessation information to all patients and also treatment strategies such as

In the article written by Jackson and co-authors, there are six key lessons given on the effectiveness of health promotion. All of these skills lead to the development of personal skills to be developed. These skills were developed when health promotion and exposure at a policy level, were put in place within a community, and from there, it became a responsibility for the individual level. An in text example would be the WHO convention for tobacco control. WHO used marketing and promotional techniques through all forms of mass communications, even within the gate keepers themselves., the gatekeepers being the consumer or individuals gas station or convenience store where cigarettes and tobacco products would typically be bought. By taking such

Setting events, antecedents and consequences are all included in development of a hypothesis. It restates the interfering behavior while describing the behavior and determining its function. The setting events of this behavior is he home of Emilia and her family. Emilia is tired form cleaning, cooking and watching the kids all day without adult interaction. The maintaining consequences for this behavior is that once she has an outburst, the children leave her alone and Emilia is able to resume her conversation with her husband. Based on this information and the data collected, Emilia appears to be trying to avoid the interruption from her children. She yells so she can escape their interruption. The behavior is negatively reinforced because after yells the children leave her alone so she is getting what she wants by yelling. The need to escape from the interruption is the function of the behavior. There is enough evidence to develop a hypothesis statement. One could conclude this as a hypothesis statement: In an effort to maintain adult

One of my first memories in the United States was taking a Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E) class. I was in sixth grade and a top student, as talking about drugs and alcohol and the way they affect us was fascinating to me. This is why, the following year, I volunteered to become a peer educator in Teens Against Tobacco Use (T.A.T.U). For a couple of years, I gave presentations to young students which included facts, demonstrations, and games, to spread the knowledge that tobacco is harmful and that staying away from smoking prolongs life expectancy and increases the quality of life. It should come as no surprise, then, that I consider myself a big proponent of staying tobacco-free and encouraging others to quit smoking as a great way to promote health. I remember watching my mom and sister as they took part in their nightly ritual of smoking a few cigarettes to unwind. “Did you know that a main component of cigarettes is used as rocket fuel?” I would ask them, as I opened the window and they stared back at me blankly. “We know, we know” was the answer every time. I knew that convincing them to quit was no easy task, but I was committed. Day after day, I proudly stated a new fact about the evils of smoking. Finally one day, they quit. At first, they attributed it to the cost. Since we had just immigrated to the United States, the cost of cigarettes was simply not something they could afford. I didn’t believe it. I proudly

Perhaps the biggest reason we are not doing more health evangelism is because we haven’t been doing it up to this point and we really do not know how to do it. On the scientific side, health evangelism of the type advocated here has not been studied. We would do more health evangelism if we had proof that health evangelism is more effective in changing behaviors than traditional behavior change