Abstract
Background
Tobacco is the leading cause of preventable death in Ireland; half of all long-term smokers die prematurely from smoking-related diseases. Achieving ‘Tobacco Free Ireland’ (a smoking prevalence of less than 5%) will require the prevention of smoking initiation and the promotion of smoking cessation.
Methods
A secondary analysis of Healthy Ireland 2015 was undertaken to identify determinants of smoking cessation attempts and the use of smoking cessation aids in the general adult population in Ireland.
Results
The majority of quit attempts were made unassisted. A number of factors including motivation to quit, tobacco dependency, deprivation, age, and chronic disease were found to be associated with making a quit attempt and with the use of help in a quit attempt; however, the effect of these determinants was not all the same. The odds of making a quit attempt decreased (adjusted OR 0.97, 95% CI 0.96 to 0.99) for every increase in cigarette smoked per day, but when a quit attempt was made, the odds of using help increased (adjusted OR 1.04, 95% CI 1.01 to 1.06). Older smokers were less likely to have made a quit attempt than younger smokers (OR 0.66, 95% CI 0.45 to 0.98) but were nearly twice as likely to have used help in a quit attempt (OR 1.93, 95% CI 1.06 to 3.54).
Conclusions
This study highlights the need to strengthen smoking cessation in Ireland to increase the number of smokers that successfully quit and achieve a Tobacco Free Ireland. The development and implementation of National Clinical Guidelines for the Diagnosis and Treatment of Tobacco Addiction will play a key role in this.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Department of Health: Tobacco Policy Review Group (2013) Tobacco Free Ireland. Dublin. https://health.gov.ie/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/TobaccoFreeIreland.pdf. Accessed Aug 2019
ICF International (2016) An assessment of the economic cost of smoking in Ireland. London https://health.gov.ie/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/An-assessment-of-the-economic-cost-of-smoking-in-Ireland.pdf. Accessed Aug 2019
National Centre for Smoking Cessation and Training (NCSCT) (2013) Stop smoking services and health inequalities. NCSCT. Available from: http://www.ncsct.co.uk/usr/pub/NCSCT_briefing_effect_of_SSS_on_health_inequalities.pdf. Accessed Feb 2018
Giskes K, van Lenthe FJ, Turrell G, Brug J, Mackenbach JP (2006) Smokers living in deprived areas are less likely to quit: a longitudinal follow-up. Tob Control 15(6):485–488
Davy M (2007) Socio-economic inequalities in smoking: an examination of generational trends in Great Britain. Health Stat Q 34:26–34
Currie LM, Blackman K, Clancy L, Levy DT (2013) The effect of tobacco control policies on smoking prevalence and smoking-attributable deaths in Ireland using the Ireland SS simulation model. Tob Control 22(e1):e25–e32
Keane E, Gavin A, Perry C et al (2017) Trends in health behaviours, health outcomes and contextual factors between 1998-2014: findings from the Irish health behaviour in school-aged children study. Department of Health & Galway: health promotion research Centre, National University of Ireland, Galway, Dublin
Department of Health and Ipsos MRBI (2017). Healthy Ireland survey 2017: summary of findings. Dublin. Contract No.: ISBN: 978-1-4064-2965-7
Health Information and Quality Authority (2017) Health technology assessment (HTA) of smoking cessation interventions. Dublin. Available from: https://www.hiqa.ie/sites/default/files/2017-04/Smoking%20Cessation%20HTA.pdf. Accessed April 2019
Department of Health and Children and Ispos MRBI (2016) Healthy Ireland sSurvey 2016: summary of findings. Dublin. Contract No.: ISBN: 978-1-4064-2928-2 https://health.gov.ie/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Healthy-Ireland-Survey-2016-Summary-Findings.pdf. Accessed Aug 2019
Vangeli E, Stapleton J, Smit ES, Borland R, West R (2011) Predictors of attempts to stop smoking and their success in adult general population samples: a systematic review. Addiction 106(12):2110–2121
Smit ES, Hoving C, Schelleman-Offermans K, West R, de Vries H (2014) Predictors of successful and unsuccessful quit attempts among smokers motivated to quit. Addict Behav 39(9):1318–1324
Borland R, Partos TR, Yong HH, Cummings KM, Hyland A (2012) How much unsuccessful quitting activity is going on among adult smokers? Data from the international tobacco control four country cohort survey. Addiction 107(3):673–682
Chaiton M, Diemert L, Cohen JE, Bondy SJ, Selby P, Philipneri A, Schwartz R (2016) Estimating the number of quit attempts it takes to quit smoking successfully in a longitudinal cohort of smokers. BMJ Open 6(6):e011045
Filippidis FT, Gerovasili V, Vardavas CI, Agaku IT, Tountas Y (2014) Determinants of use of smoking cessation aids in 27 European countries. Prev Med 65:99–102
Cokkinides VE, Ward E, Jemal A, Thun MJ (2005) Under-use of smoking-cessation treatments: results from the National Health Interview Survey, 2000. Am J Prev Med 28(1):119–122
Health Service Executive (2016). Making every contact count: a health behaviour change framework and implementation plan for health professionals in the Irish health service. Available from: https://www.hse.ie/eng/about/who/healthwellbeing/making-every-contact-count/making-every-contact-count-framework.pdf. Accessed Feb 2018
Marti J (2010) Successful smoking cessation and duration of abstinence--an analysis of socioeconomic determinants. Int J Environ Res Public Health 7(7):2789–2799
Kaleta D, Korytkowski P, Makowiec-Dąbrowska T, Usidame B, Bąk-Romaniszyn L, Fronczak A (2012) Predictors of long-term smoking cessation: results from the global adult tobacco survey in Poland (2009-2010). BMC Public Health 12:1020
World Health Organization. (2015) WHO report on trends in prevalence of tobacco smoking 2015. Geneva https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/156262/9789241564922_eng.pdf?sequence=1. Accessed Aug 2019
Burke K, Morris K, McGarrigle L (2012) An introductory guide to implementation. Centre for Effective Services, Dublin
Department of Health and Children and Ipsos MRBI (2015) Healthy Ireland survey 2015: summary of findings. Dublin. Contract No.: ISBN 978-1-4064-2892-6 https://health.gov.ie/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Healthy-Ireland-Survey-2015-Summary-of-Findings.pdf. Accessed Aug 2019
Hosmer DW, Lemeshow S (2000) Applied logistic regression, 2nd edn. Wiley, New York
RStudio Team (2015) RStudio: integrated development for R. RStudio, Inc., Boston, MA URL http://www.rstudio.com/. Accessed Feb 2018
Yeomans K, Payne KA, Marton JP, Merikle EP, Proskorovsky I, Zou KH, Li Q, Willke RJ (2011) Smoking, smoking cessation and smoking relapse patterns: a web-based survey of current and former smokers in the US. Int J Clin Pract 65(10):1043–1054
Suresh K, Thomas SV, Suresh G (2011) Design, data analysis and sampling techniques for clinical research. Ann Indian Acad Neurol 14(4):287–290
Li L, Feng G, Jiang Y, Yong HH, Borland R, Fong GT (2011) Prospective predictors of quitting behaviours among adult smokers in six cities in China: findings from the international tobacco control (ITC) China survey. Addiction 106(7):1335–1345
Borland R, Li L, Driezen P, Wilson N, Hammond D, Thompson ME, Fong GT, Mons U, Willemsen MC, McNeill A, Thrasher JF, Cummings KM (2012) Cessation assistance reported by smokers in 15 countries participating in the international tobacco control (ITC) policy evaluation surveys. Addiction 107(1):197–205
Brugha R, Tully N, Dicker P, Shelley E, Ward M, McGee H. (2009) SLÁN 2007: Survey of lifestyle, attitudes and nutrition in Ireland. Smoking Patterns in Ireland: Implications for policy and services. Department of Health and Children. Dublin: The Stationery Office. https://epubs.rcsi.ie/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1011&context=psycholrep. Accessed Aug 2019
Benmarhnia T, Pierce JP, Leas E, White MM, Strong DR, Noble ML, Trinidad DR (2018) Can E-cigarettes and pharmaceutical aids increase smoking cessation and reduce cigarette consumption? Findings from a nationally representative cohort of American smokers. Am J Epidemiol 187(11):2397–2404. https://doi.org/10.1093/aje/kwy129
McRobbie H, Bullen C, Hartmann-Boyce J, Hajek P. (2014) Electronic cigarettes for smoking cessation and reduction. Cochrane Database Syst Rev (12):CD010216. doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD010216.pub2
Borelli B, O’Connor GT (2019) E-cigarettes to assist with smoking cessation. N Engl J Med 380(7):678–679. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMe1816406
Ngo A, Cheng KW, Chaloupka FJ, Shang C (2017) The effect of MPOWER scores on cigarette smoking prevalence and consumption. Prev Med 105S:S10–S14. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2017.05.006
Li S, Levy D, Clancy L (2018) The effect of tobacco control policies on smoking prevalence using the SimSmoke Ireland model: influence of interventions 2010–2016 on reaching End Game 2025. Tobacco Induced Diseases 16(1):42. https://doi.org/10.18332/tid/84260
Department of Health and Children and Ispos MRBI (2018) Healthy Ireland survey 2018: summary of findings. Dublin. Contract No.: ISBN: 978-1-4468-8011-1 https://health.gov.ie/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Healthy-Ireland-Survey-2018.pdf. Accessed Aug 2019
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interests
The authors declare they have no conflict of interests.
Additional information
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Petty-Saphon, N., Kavanagh, P. Towards a Tobacco Free Ireland—scaling up and strengthening quit smoking behaviour at population level. Ir J Med Sci 189, 3–10 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11845-019-02083-8
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11845-019-02083-8