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lets see $3,200,000.00 devided by the 400 women with a quiting rate of 20%. That comes to $40,000 per person that quits. Give me that kind of money and I will quit too.
Josephine Thompkins has smoked for more than 40 years, but on Thursday she sat with a group of her neighbors now determined to quit.
"Too expensive," she said.
Those women around her could be her key to success. Ms. Thompkins, 59, and more than 400 women in public housing in Augusta, Aiken and Charleston, S.C., will soon join a unique smoking-cessation effort called Sister to Sister.
The program grew out of earlier pilot studies with other Augusta neighborhoods and will target 16 more -- nine in Augusta and Aiken and seven in Charleston.
Different neighborhoods will receive different levels of service as the five-year, $3.2 million study goes along, but at the most intensive it will be a "multilevel intervention," said Principal Investigator Jeannette Andrews, associate dean of research in the College of Nursing at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston.
The different areas will form neighborhood advisory boards to aid the women in the study, said Martha Tingen, a professor of medicine at the Medical College of Georgia and principal investigator for the Augusta and Aiken arm of the study. It could be a cookout where they distribute information on the dangers of secondhand smoke, she said, or an agreement to ban smoking in homes.
"It's neighborhood-driven," Dr. Tingen said. Advisers from the study will meet with them, "but they're the ones that make the decisions."
In some neighborhoods, women will also form groups that meet once a week with smoking-cessation specialists, Dr. Tingen said. And those women will also get a coach who contacts them once a week, she said.
"The whole purpose of that is to be encouraging to them, to address any problems they're having, concerns, challenges, things like that," Dr. Tingen said.
And based on previous studies, it works, said Dr. Andrews, who is also director of the Center for Community Health Partnerships at MUSC and a former MCG investigator.
Three out of four participants reduced their smoking, and nearly half were not smoking after six months, she said. In other interventions, the success rate was 20 percent to 24 percent, Dr. Tingen said.
"This is much higher than other smoking-cessation programs," Dr. Andrews said.
And it doesn't have to be limited to smoking cessation. Part of the study will be a health survey of the neighborhood, and the same model may be used to address other health problems, such as obesity and getting fit, Dr. Andrews said.
"It's a great model," Dr. Tingen said. It combines what scientists know about what works with the knowledge of those in the neighborhood on what works for them, Dr. Andrews said.
"It's a great combination of skills when you combine the two groups together to really try to impact behavior change," she said.
As she prepares to drop a habit she has had since she was 17 years old, Ms. Thompkins is hoping to benefit from that partnership as well.
"I wish myself luck," she joked.
Reach Tom Corwin at (706) 823-3213 or tom.corwin@augustachronicle.com.
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lets see $3,200,000.00 devided by the 400 women with a quiting rate of 20%. That comes to $40,000 per person that quits. Give me that kind of money and I will quit too.
Over 3 million dollars - ridicullous no matter what the results.
The cost of the study seems to be well worth it when balanced against what it costs to treat smoking-related illnesses among the indigent poor, who make an ER visit even when they have a cough or sniffle (all at taxpayer expense). $3.2 million is a drop in the bucket by comparison, and the results are not 20% success rate (as stated by a previous post) - rather, they are 75% reduction in smoking, and almost 50% complete cessation - after only six months. Over a longer period, the rate will probably increase.
This is a good news story, and it more widely implies that its application could allow those who are enslaved by tobacco and other health-threatening habits to regain control of their lives by peer accountability and positive role-modeling. It would be great to see this extended into behavior modification that addresses an even greater health threat -- obesity.
If ya gottem, smoke em..
I guess REDQUINOA has more knowledge than the doctor doing the study. She has the insight as to why people go to the emergency room, What their financial status is wtc etc. So why are we even doing a study? What really bothers me is, if smoking is the number one health problem, and the success rate for quitting is only 20 percent, Why isn't it the number one funded program in America? Well I believe its because the government makes sooo much money off the program it would put a serious dent in the economy is all smokers quit. For now we just have to find a way to keep people with a cough from going to the emergency rooms and waiting 6-8 hours to see a doctor. I sure hope it is smoking related and not something else, but I am sure REDQUINOA has the facts correct.
The taxpayer provides the housing, food, and livlihood for these people and then our government deems in necessary to provide millions more to get them to stop smoking. Wow. When will a certain segment of our population ever start making good choices and dedicate themselves to be self sufficent and stop sucking the life out of America?
I wouldn't dare presume to know more than the doctor doing this study. I apologize if my post suggested that. I just see what happens daily down at the MCG ER, which is clogged with uninsured people, as they seek their only avenue for treatment - even for the most minor illness. My logic in the earlier comment was that if smoking-related illness could be eliminated or reduced from that equation, it would save money (maybe). You may well be right about the economic impact, but it doesn't justify the government's continuation to look the other way while premature death caused by tobacco use escalates. In my opinion, one sure truth is that the USA has some serious health problems, and equally serious health-care problems (no news flash there!). Any study or program, or whatever you name it that purports to solve those problems is worth an honest try. Again, that's why I'd be keen to see it applied to a much wider (please pardon the pun) medical problem -- that of obesity. And I'm talking "prevention" of obesity; not its "treatment" (which does nothing).
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