Smoking Cessation Invention in the Emergency Department (ED)

The emergency department (ED) serves a vital and growing role in the US health care system, responsible for both the delivery of emergent medical care and for safety-net care for populations without traditional access to health services. Uninsured populations rely significantly on the safety-net services of the ED. Between 2000-2005 the number of uninsured Americans increased from 39.6 million to 46.1 million, and this growth is expected to continue. Many health policy analysts consider the ED to be an effective place to provide preventative care. Prophylactic tetanus immunization, for example, has been a successful preventive health intervention that has become a standard of care in the ED setting. Brief smoking cessation interventions have been introduced in the ED but have not had great success based on lack of follow-up and continuity.

Our study is novel in that it introduces a brief smoking intervention through use of an established, federally-funded and federally-sponsored cessation counseling resource, the National Smoking Cessation Quit Line, also available at smokefree.gov. This is a joint initiative between the Tobacco Control Research Branch of the National Cancer Institute and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Since ED patients who smoke often lack the ability to use self-help cessation resources, we hypothesize that by introducing this population to the counselors on the National Smoking Cessation Quit Line (also called the 1-800-QUIT-NOW line) during the ED visit via phone, that this new brief intervention would have a realizable and significant effect on smoking cessation among the this population.