Increasing Tobacco Use Cessation: Multicomponent Interventions that Include Telephone Support

(2000 Archived Review)

These multicomponent interventions provide people who use tobacco products with cessation counseling or assistance in initiating or maintaining abstinence via telephone. Telephone support can be reactive (tobacco user initiates contact) or proactive (provider initiates contact or user initiates contact with provider follow-up). Telephone support includes the use of trained counselors, health care providers, or taped messages in single or multiple sessions. Sessions usually follow a standardized protocol for providing advice and counseling, and the telephone support component is usually combined with other interventions, such as client education materials, individual or group cessation counseling, or nicotine-replacement therapies.

Summary of Task Force Recommendations & Findings

The Community Preventive Services Task Force recommends cessation interventions that include telephone support based on strong evidence of effectiveness that this combination intervention:

• Increases patient tobacco cessation
• Is effective in both clinical settings and when implemented community-wide

It was not possible to determine the effect of the telephone support component alone. The minimum effective combination evaluated by the Task Force was community-wide, proactive telephone support (proactive follow-up) combined with patient education materials.

Task Force Finding

Results from the Systematic Review

Thirty-two studies qualified for the review of this intervention.

• Client tobacco cessation over a median follow-up of 12 months (range: 5 weeks to 34 months): median increase of 2.6 percentage points (range: -3.4 to 23 percentage points; 30 studies)
• Increase in tobacco cessation rates for patient education with client telephone support compared to patient education alone: median of 2.4 percentage points (range: 0.9 to 6.3 percentage points; 6 studies)
• In all of the qualifying studies, telephone support was coordinated with additional interventions including: patient education, provider-delivered counseling, nicotine replacement, smoking cessation clinics, and televised cessation series. The client telephone support efforts were proactive in twenty-seven studies and reactive in the other five.

Find a Research-tested Intervention Program (RTIP) about multicomponent interventions that include telephone support to increase tobacco use cessation (What is an RTIP?).

These findings were based on a systematic review of all available studies, conducted on behalf of the Task Force by a team of specialists in systematic review methods, and in research, practice and policy related to tobacco use.

Supporting Materials

• Evidence Gaps
• Included Studies

Publications

Hopkins DP, Briss PA, Ricard CJ. Reviews of evidence regarding interventions to reduce tobacco use and exposure to environmental tobacco smoke. [PDF - 6.38MB] Am J Prev Med 2001;20(2S):16–66.

Task Force on Community Preventive Services. Recommendations regarding interventions to reduce tobacco use and exposure to environmental tobacco smoke. [PDF - 1.46KB] Am J Prev Med 2001;20(2S):10–5.

Hopkins DP, Husten CG, Fielding JE. Evidence reviews and recommendations on interventions to reduce tobacco use and exposure to environmental tobacco smoke: a summary of selected guidelines. [PDF - 4.10MB] Am J Prev Med 2001;20(2S):67–87.

Task Force on Community Preventive Services. Tobacco. [PDF - 3.63KB] In : Zaza S, Briss PA, Harris KW, eds. The Guide to Community Preventive Services: What Works to Promote Health? Atlanta (GA): Oxford University Press;2005:3-79.

More Community Guide publications about Tobacco Use

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Sample Citation

The content of publications of the Guide to Community Preventive Services is in the public domain. Citation as to source, however, is appreciated. Sample citation: Guide to Community Preventive Services. Increasing tobacco use cessation: multicomponent interventions that include telephone support (2000 archived review). www.thecommunityguide.org/tobacco/cessation/multicomponentinterventions.html. Last updated: MM/DD/YYYY.

Review completed: May 2000