Short communication“Ready to quit chew?” smokeless tobacco cessation in rural nebraska☆
Section snippets
Background
“Harvest for a Lifetime!” was a cancer-control program directed by the Chronic Disease Division of the Nebraska Department of Health (NDH). The program targeted farm families in a 10-county region in south-central Nebraska. The purpose of the program was to reduce specific risk behaviors associated with three types of cancer: oral, skin, and the hematapoietics (leukemia and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma).
A 1992 Nebraska Health Department survey of health and safety behaviors, conducted in 18 rural
Results
Between January and December 1994, a total of 250 quit kits were mailed; of these, 205 were identified as users of smokeless tobacco; the remaining callers were determined to be spouses, girlfriends, or friends of chewers. A decision was made to only contact chewers who were mailed a quit kit. A telephone follow-up during December 1995 was completed with 104 (50.7%) of the chewers who had received a quit kit. Of the subjects who did not complete a follow-up survey (n = 101), 45 did not have
Discussion
Billboards can be an effective method of reaching a wide audience with a very simple message. However, billboard advertising is seldom free. Development of the message can be time-consuming if you research your audience thoroughly and learn to what message they will most likely respond. The use of paid outdoor advertising in rural south-central Nebraska was able to reach smokeless tobacco users who were interested in quitting, and to engage users to make a quit attempt. The conservative
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Evaluating strategies and costs to recruit smokeless tobacco users
2007, Addictive BehaviorsCitation Excerpt :Outreach to dental clinics to use a fax form to follow-up with interested patients was more expensive than other methods and may be more conducive to a program with a longer duration. Others have used outdoor advertising to recruit oral snuff users in rural Nebraska (Boyle, Stilwell, Vidlak, & Huneke 1999); however, this method was not successful in generating calls in rural Minnesota. These data suggest a need to experiment within and across strategies to reach the target audience.
What we know about information seeking and use and how research makes a difference in our knowing
2023, Information Services and UseSystematic Review of Health Communication for Non-Cigarette Tobacco Products
2019, Health CommunicationSmokeless tobacco cessation interventions: A systematic review
2018, Indian Journal of Medical ResearchEffects of framing proximal benefits of quitting and motivation to quit as a query on communications about tobacco constituents
2017, Nicotine and Tobacco ResearchSocio-demographic correlates of betel, areca and smokeless tobacco use as a high risk behavior for head and neck cancers in a squatter settlement of Karachi, Pakistan
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This project was supported in part by a grant (U03/CCU706134) from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Dr. Boyle was supported by grants (DA 07097 and DA 09259) from the National Institute on Drug Abuse.