Poor, rural teens get little help to quit smoking

By Amy Norton

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Smoking cessation programs for teenagers are widely available in the U.S., although they're the least common in communities where they may be most needed, a new study suggests.

Research shows that more than half of adolescent smokers in the U.S. have tried and failed to quit. One reason for the lack of success may be that most teens try to kick the habit on their own.

In recent years, experts have called for making quit programs more accessible to young smokers, but it's been unclear how common such programs are.

In the new study, researchers were able to find and survey 591 programs for young smokers in 408 randomly selected U.S. counties.

Programs were the most common in urban counties, and the least common in rural and lower-income areas -- where research suggests a growing number of kids are taking up smoking.

Still, the findings can be viewed in a generally positive light, according to Dr. Susan J. Curry, a researcher at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the study's lead author.

"The main point from our findings is that there are a lot of programs out there for youth who want to quit smoking," she told Reuters Health.

The 591 programs Curry's team surveyed had served more than 36,000 young smokers in the past year, according to findings published in the American Journal of Public Health.

Most consisted of school-based group meetings, typically led by a trained teacher, school nurse, or counselor who used a "packaged" program from organizations like the American Lung Association.

Among urban counties, most had at least one quit program for underage smokers, compared with less than half of rural counties. Similarly, higher-income counties were more likely to have a program than lower-income areas were.

A lack of financial resources could be one reason for these differences, according to Curry. Or teen smoking cessation may just not be a priority in less densely populated rural areas.

"I think that future work should focus on building from what we have and to understand not so much why programs are lacking, but what has worked to make youth cessation a priority in places where programs exist," she said.

SOURCE: American Journal of Public Health, January 2007.