Innovative Intervention to Increase Smoking Cessation Attempts in African Americans

Audience: Our presentation will be of interest to cessation providers and funders.

Key Points: We learned from our earlier community-based participatory research projects that low income African American smokers face barriers that make it difficult for them to commit to a rigorous five-week smoking cessation study. In response to these challenges, we designed the African American Pre-Cessation Enhancement Intervention (AAP-CEI), an innovative strategy utilizing the principles of social justice and community capacity building to deliver pre-cessation services to an underserved, over-burdened, and oftentimes hard to reach community. AAP-CEI is a stand alone, single dose intervention that incorporates tobacco industry documents, media deconstruction and capacity building exercises to contribute to community norm changes. We utilized a focus group methodology as a tool for recruitment and service delivery. AAP-CEI may significantly improve the cessation rates among African American adult smokers by increasing their readiness to quit, quit attempts and subsequent participation in existing cessation opportunities, such as attending local smoking cessation classes, accessing online smoking cessation programs, calling the Quitline, quitting cold turkey, utilizing nicotine replacement therapy, or seeking some other type of alternative cessation aid such as hypnotherapy, acupuncture, or relaxation techniques.

Educational Experience: The audience should leave this experience with information on an innovative strategy that motivates low-income populations to increase cessation attempts.

Benefits: Participants will learn about this brief one time intervention that is designed to accelerate progression toward cessation and is appropriate for residents of low-income communities who are chronically faced with multiple barriers impacting their ability to attend multiple session interventions.