Program helps keep teens away from cigarettes

A smoking prevention and cessation intervention involving pediatricians and older peer counselors has proven effective in helping adolescent smokers to quit and preventing nonsmokers from taking up the deadly habit.

The intervention, carried out during a routine doctor's visit, consisted of brief conversations with the adolescents in which pediatricians asked about smoking, advised cessation or continued abstinence, and referred the adolescent to a peer counselor to develop a personalized strategy for smoking cessation or continued abstinence.

The peer counselors - female college students aged 21 to 25 years who had smoked as adolescents and successfully quit - met one-on-one with the teen and stayed in contact by phone.

Dr. Lori Pbert, of the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, and colleagues tested the program in roughly 2,700, 13- to 17-year-old smokers and nonsmokers from eight pediatric care clinics located in central Massachusetts.

They report in the journal Pediatrics that nonsmokers who went through the program, compared with those who did not (controls), were significantly more likely to report having remained abstinent at the 6- and 12-month follow-up assessment.

Smokers who received the intervention, compared with those who did not, were more likely to report having quit at 6 months, but not at 12 months.

These results are "encouraging considering the tremendous challenge of reducing smoking initiation and increasing cessation among adolescents," the study team notes.

SOURCE: Pediatrics, April 2008.