Impact of a national tobacco education campaign on weekly numbers of quitline calls and website visitors--United States, March 4-June 23, 2013
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
Abstract
During March 4-June 23, 2013, CDC conducted its second annual national paid-media tobacco education campaign encouraging adult smokers to quit. These campaigns, called Tips from Former Smokers (Tips), feature true stories of former smokers living with serious smoking-related diseases. To assess the immediate impact of the 2013 Tips campaign, CDC analyzed the weekly numbers of calls to the national telephone quitline portal (1-800-QUIT-NOW) and the weekly numbers of unique visitors to the Tips website (http://www.cdc.gov/tips)* during the 16-week campaign and during the 4 weeks before and after the campaign. During the campaign, the average weekly numbers of calls and website visitors increased by 75% and almost 38-fold, respectively, compared with the 4 weeks before the campaign, and quickly decreased almost to pre-campaign levels once the campaign ended. This suggests that the campaign led to 151,536 additional quitline calls and nearly 2.8 million additional unique Tips website visitors above pre-campaign levels. During the first 12 weeks of the campaign,† when the national television ads were on and off air on alternate weeks, average weekly call volume fell by 38% during the 6 weeks when the national television ads were off air compared with the 6 weeks when these ads were running. These results suggest that emotionally evocative tobacco education media campaigns featuring graphic images of the health effects of smoking can increase quitline calls and website visits and that these campaigns' effects decrease rapidly once they are discontinued.
Figures
References
- Community Preventive Services Task Force. Reducing tobacco use and secondhand smoke exposure: mass-reach health communication interventions. Atlanta, GA: Task Force on Community Preventive Services; 2013. Available at .
- National Cancer Institute. Tobacco control monograph no. 19. Bethesda, MD: US Department of Health and Human Services, National Cancer Institute; 2008. The role of the media in promoting and reducing tobacco use. Available at .
- Durkin S, Brennan E, Wakefield M. Mass media campaigns to promote smoking cessation among adults: an integrative review. Tob Control. 2012;21:127–38.
- CDC. Best practices for comprehensive tobacco control programs—2007. Atlanta, GA: US Department of Health and Human Services, CDC; 2007. Available at .
- Farrelly M, Mann N, Watson K, Pechacek T. The influence of television advertisements on promoting calls to telephone quitlines. Health Educ Res. 2013;28:15–22.
- Fiore MC, Jaen CR, Baker TB, et al. Treating tobacco use and dependence: 2008 update Clinical practice guideline. Rockville, MD: US Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service; 2008. Available at .
- Community Preventive Services Task Force. Reducing tobacco use and secondhand smoke exposure: Internet-based cessation interventions. Atlanta, GA: Community Preventive Services Task Force; 2013. Available at .
- CDC. Effect of ending an anti-tobacco youth campaign on adolescent susceptibility to cigarette smoking—Minnesota, 2002–2003. MMWR. 2004;53:301–4.
- CDC. Increases in quitline calls and smoking cessation website visitors during a national tobacco education campaign—March 19–June 10, 2012. MMWR. 2012;61:667–70.
- McAfee T, Davis KC, Alexander RL, Jr, Pechacek TF, Bunnell R. Effect of the first federally funded US antismoking national media campaign. Lancet. 2013 September 9; [Epub ahead of print]
Source: PubMed