Tobacco cessation through dental office settings

Abstract

There is increasing interest in broadly inclusive public health interventions that involve low-cost, self-help materials and minimal support from professionals. Dental health care workers (DHCWs) are a largely untapped resource for providing advice and brief counseling to tobacco-using patients, and there are good reasons to believe that they can be effective in this role. The results of our randomized clinical trials have shown that a brief dental office-based intervention can be effective in helping smokeless tobacco users to quit and smokers to reduce their use and become more ready to quit. A third clinical trial tested the effectiveness of two methods of disseminating the smokeless tobacco intervention to DHCWs throughout the western United States. Workshops were more effective than self-study in effecting behavior change, although our analyses indicate that self-study was more cost-efficient. These studies have demonstrated the viability of using dentists and dental hygienists to provide brief cessation advice and supportive materials in the context of regular oral health visits to encourage their patients to quit. The results of these studies also support the timeliness of further dissemination and diffusion of this program to practitioners, dental schools, and dental hygiene programs.