Tobacco cessation among low-income smokers: motivational enhancement and nicotine patch treatment

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) in this randomized controlled trial publication.

Despite decades of tobacco use decline among the general population in the United States, tobacco use among low-income populations continues to be a major public health concern.

Smoking rates are higher among individuals with less than a high school education, those with no health insurance, and among individuals living below the federal poverty level.

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 846 participants taking part.

The age groups tagged for this paper are adults and middle-aged adults, both men and women.

A total of 846 participants were randomly assigned either to motivational enhancement treatment plus brief physician advice and 8 weeks of nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) or to standard care, which consisted of brief physician advice and 8 weeks of NRT.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

Tobacco smoking abstinence was at 1, 2, 6, and 12 months following baseline.

What Was Measured

Smoking rates are higher among individuals with less than a high school education, those with no health insurance, and among individuals living below the federal poverty level.

Despite these disparities, smoking cessation treatments for low-income populations have not been extensively tested.

PubMed files the paper under topics including Counseling, Health Promotion, Motivation, Nicotine, Poverty, Smoking and Smoking Cessation.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized study of Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) in 846 participants.

With several hundred people or more, it is a fairly large study for this kind of research.

Results are reported in around 4 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2014 (Nicotine & tobacco research : official journal of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco), a journal based in England.

More context: the Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) compound page, all human trials.