Brief reportsUnder-use of smoking-cessation treatments: Results from the National Health Interview Survey, 2000
Introduction
Despite significant progress in reducing smoking prevalence and per capita cigarette consumption in the United States, the percentage of smokers who succeed in any given quit attempt remains low.1, 2 Treatment using a combination of behavioral counseling and pharmacotherapy can increase long-term cessation rates from ≤11% to between 15% and 25%.3 Current treatment guidelines recommend that every patient who uses tobacco should be counseled by a healthcare provider to quit smoking and should be offered tobacco dependence treatments in the absence of contraindications.3 Despite the demonstrated efficacy and safety of such treatments,4 and their increased availability in the 1990s,2, 5, 6 the prevalence of treatment for tobacco dependence remains low, ranging from 8.5% to 21% in four recent state-based surveys.7, 8, 9, 10, 11
The last national prevalence estimate of the use of cessation aids at the last quit attempt (15%) were based on data collected in 1986.12 This report provides national estimates of treatments for smoking cessation used at the last quit attempt among smokers, using data collected in 2000 in the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS).
Section snippets
Data source
Data were used from the 2000 NHIS, Cancer Control Supplement (CCM), to describe the prevalence of treatment for smoking cessation among smokers who attempted to stop for at least 1 day. The NHIS is a cross-sectional, annual, household interview survey of the civilian noninstitutionalized household population of the United States, conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics. Methodologic details of NHIS 2000 can be found elsewhere.13, 14 A total of 32,374 individuals aged ≥18 were
Results
Overall, only 22.4% of smokers in the survey who tried to quit in the last year had used any type of cessation aids. The use of any cessation aids was low across all categories of health insurance but was lowest for the uninsured (13.2%) and for smokers with Medicaid (15.5%) and Medicare (17.8%) insurance. Use of pharmacotherapy was more common (21.7%) than use of behavioral counseling (1.3%) (Table 1).
Among 3010 current smokers and former smokers who tried to quit and had seen a healthcare
Discussion
This report shows that based on the national 2000 NHIS survey, the reported use of recommended treatments for smoking cessation was low across insurance categories. Less than 18% of smokers with Medicare, Medicaid, or no health insurance, and only 25% of those with private or military insurance used appropriate treatment. The low overall prevalence observed nationally is consistent with previous state-based reports.8, 9, 10, 11 The reported use of cessation aids by smokers trying to quit was
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