Who's Quitting? Who Needs Additional Support? Cessation Disparities by Race, Education, and Income, 2007 to 2018

Abstract

Purpose: The current study (1) examines how disparities in quitting cigarette and other tobacco product use have changed by race and socioeconomic status and (2) utilizes an expanded measure, any tobacco quit ratio (aQR), that extends previous work on cigarette quit ratios and captures use and cessation in a growing tobacco marketplace.

Design: Repeated cross-sectional representative survey; Setting: Minnesota.

Subjects: Adult Minnesotans from the 2007 and 2018 Minnesota Adult Tobacco Survey (combined N=9,258).

Measures: Cigarette QR (cQR), aQR (cigarette, cigar, smokeless, pipe, e-cigarette, hookah), past year quit attempts, and recent cessation.

Analysis: Weights ensured statewide representativeness. Regression analyses tested for differences by race (Black vs White), income (low vs medium/high), and education (low vs medium/high) across survey years.

Results: cQRs and aQRs were relatively high among White respondents and those with medium-high education and income. The disparity in aQR between White and Black respondents decreased from 2007 to 2018. Black respondents were more likely to try to quit than White respondents but were less likely to report recent cessation.

Conclusion: Cessation disparities by race and socioeconomic status have changed little between 2007 and 2018, and the magnitude of the disparity for several cessation indicators remains large. Public health professionals and medical practitioners can play a key role in reducing disparities by supporting public policies and cessation interventions that target social determinants of health and associated barriers to quitting.

Keywords: cessation; cigarette smoking; health communications; health policy; race; socioeconomic disparities; tobacco use.