A randomized trial of a brief intervention to promote smoking cessation for parents during child hospitalization

Abstract

Background: Parental smoking significantly increases the risk of child hospitalization for multiple illnesses. Parenting smokers may not have easy access to smoking cessation services elsewhere and a few interventions with this population in the inpatient setting have shown promising results.

Methods: We sought to evaluate the efficacy of a brief intervention with smoking parents on smoking cessation rates after child hospitalization with a randomized, controlled trial.

Results: Sixty smoking parents participated in the study. The majority of study participants were uninsured women under age 30 who smoked approximately half of a pack per day. There were no statistically significant differences between control and intervention groups for our outcomes. However, 45% (CI: 33-57%) of all participants reported at least one quit attempt during the 2-month study period and 18% (CI: 10-30%) of participants were quit at study conclusion.

Conclusions: Willingness to quit smoking was much higher than expected in this population of parenting smokers.