TUESDAY, Oct. 22, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- Smokers find it easier to quit if they’re automatically offered support, even if they didn't ask for it, a new clinical trial finds. Quit rates were higher among health system patients placed in an “opt-out” program, in which tobacco cessation medications and counseling are automatically prescribed upon learning they smoke, researchers found.
It’s called an “opt-out” program because people get the meds and counseling unless they opt out of it. After a month, 22% of people in an opt-out group had quit smoking, compared with only 16% of smokers who had to opt into the cessation program, researchers reported recently in the journal JAMA Network Open . “Health care providers don’t ask patients if they would like to get evidence-based care for other conditions like asthma, high blood pressure or diabetes,” said senior researcher Kimber Richter , a professor of population health with the University of Kansas Cancer Center.
“They just identify a health condition and provide the best care possible.” “For no reason, we’ve always treated tobacco dependence differently -- we wanted to see what would happen if we proactively treated tobacco dependence,” Richter added in a university news release. For the clinical trial, nearly 750 smokers receiving medical care from the University of Kansas Health System were asked about their desire to quit, and then randomly placed into one of two groups.
Those assigned to the opt-o.