title: A phone-counseling smoking-cessation intervention for male Chinese restaurant workers.
abstract: We sought to develop a smoking-cessation intervention for male Chinese restaurant workers in New York City that required no seeking out by participants; provided support over a relatively long period of time; and was responsive to participants' cultural backgrounds and daily lives. The resulting intervention consisted of a minimum of 9 proactive phone counseling sessions within a 6-month period for each participant recruited at his worksite. All activities were conducted in Chinese languages. The efficacy of this proactive phone-counseling intervention was assessed in a pretest/posttest design comparing baseline smoking with smoking 6 months after the intervention ended. Of 137 male employees recruited at their restaurants, 101 (median age 40.5) participated in the phone-counseling intervention in 2007-2008, with 75 completing the program with at least 9 counseling calls. We found a linear increase in smoking cessation from 0% at Call 1 to 50.7% at Call 9 for 75 men who completed the program, and we found for all 101 participants a 32.7% intent-to-treat cessation rate for 6 months post-end of program, adjusted to 30.8% by saliva cotinine assessments. The results indicate that combining field outreach with phone counseling over an extended period of time can facilitate smoking cessation for population groups whose environments do not support efforts to quit smoking.
authors.affiliation: Hunter College Center for Community and Urban Health, 425 East 25th Street, Room 923-West, New York, NY 10010, USA. deeproject@aol.com
authors.forename: Dee
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Burton
authors.forename: Xin X
authors.initials: XX
authors.lastname: Zeng
authors.forename: Cynthia H
authors.initials: CH
authors.lastname: Chiu
authors.forename: Junmian
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.forename: Nga L
authors.initials: NL
authors.lastname: Sze
authors.forename: Yilin
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Margaret S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Chin
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D040421:Cell Phone; D002681:China / Q000208:ethnology; D003153:Community Health Services / Q000458:organization & administration*; D003376:Counseling / Q000379:methods*; D003469:Culture; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006723:Hong Kong / Q000208:ethnology; D006801:Humans; D008296:Malaysia / Q000208:ethnology; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009519:New York City; D015397:Program Evaluation; D012147:Restaurants; D016540:Smoking Cessation / Q000208:ethnology* / Q000379:methods; D012944:Social Support; D013997:Time Factors; D017132:Workplace; D055815:Young Adult