The statewide Kansas Clean Air law that took effect July 1 might provide some added incentive for smokers to think about quitting. A new resource is available locally to help anyone who makes that decision.
Dr. William Cannata at Pratt Family Practice and Nathan Norris, a Kansas University medical student from Derby, are working with the KU Medical Center’s Connect2Quit to encourage patients who want to quit to enroll in the research program.
The guidelines are fairly simple: it is available for anyone age 18 and over, whether they smoke five cigarettes a day, intermittently, or are 30-year pack-a-day smokers. That’s different from many programs, Cannata said, which allow only heavy smokers to participate. Participants cannot be pregnant or breastfeeding.
A participant does not have to be a patient at Pratt Family Practice or live in Pratt, although they must be willing to come in four times for counseling sessions.
People who join are randomly assigned to two different types of cessation programs — one via webcam video at Pratt Family Practice and one via telephone from their home. Counselors will take a unique approach to each patient, depending upon their smoking habits, their motivation for smoking and their motivation for wanting to quit, Cannata said. Participants will not be able to choose which type of counseling they receive.
Telephone hotlines have been available for several years; this study will compare results with delivery via webcam, in which the participant and counselor can see each other.
The success rate for any stop-smoking method is not terribly good, Cannata warned. A lot of telemedicine is already being done, he said, especially in rural areas that are removed from specialists. The study should help determine if the webcam improves success rates.
And although it is not a part of the study, he predicted that if the telemedicine approach to smoking cessation is shown to be effective, there could be some funds available in the future from insurance companies and employers to help pay for programs.
Some smokers try to quit five or six times before they find the right motivation, Cannata noted, and some are never able to quit.
Smoking is the leading cause of preventable deaths in Kansas and the United States, causing more than 400,000 deaths each year in the U.S.
Norris will begin his second year of medical school in the fall. During the summer, he is taking advantage of a rural internship with Dr. Cannata, in which he observes, sees some patients and helps out at the hospital. He had a previous experience in Pratt as an undergraduate.
