Back to Annual Meeting

Back to Annual Meeting

APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Donald S. Shepard, PhD¹, Charles J. Neighbors, PhD, MBA², Susan H. Busch, PhD³, Melissa Clark, PhD⁴, Tracy Falba³, Amanda L. Graham, PhD⁵, Pedro L. Gozalo, PhD⁶, Mathew Neuman, MS¹, George Papadonatos, PhD⁷, Jody Sindelar, PhD³, and Robert L. Stout, PhD⁸. (1) Schneider Institute for Health Policy, Brandeis University, 415 South Street, Waltham, MA 02454, (781) 736-3975, Shepard@brandeis.edu, (2) Centers for Behavioral and Preventive Medicine, Brown Medical School/The Miriam Hospital, Coro Building, Suite 500, One Hoppin St, Providence, RI 02903, (3) Department of Epilemiology and Public Health, Yale School of Medicine, 60 College Street, New Haven, CT 06520, (4) Center for Gerontology and Health Care Research, Brown University, Box G-H1, Providence, RI 02912, (5) Department of Psychiatry & Human Behavior, Brown Medical School, Box G-BH, Providence, RI 02912, (6) Bio Med Community Health, Brown University, Coro Building, Suite 5000, One Hoppin Place, Providence, RI 02903, (7) Statistics Department, Brown University, Box G-H1, Providence, RI 02912, (8) Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, 120 Wayland Avenue, Suite 7, Providence, RI 02906

Tailored telephone counseling appears to be a promising approach to smoking cessation. The practicality of this approach depends on the viability of a market for this new treatment and the price that smokers would be willing to pay. We explored these issues using a willingness-to-pay (WTP) study paradigm. WTP questions asked whether a subject would be willing to pay a specified amount for a treatment offering a given success rate, varying the hypothetical price (from $300 to $1200), the success rate (from 30% to 40%), and the order of questions. Using this paradigm, we surveyed 74 middle-aged smokers participating in the Brown University Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Center (TTURC) cohort on their WTP for a combined treatment of nicotine replacement therapy and telephone counseling. Other data from the extensively studied cohort provided covariates, such as socio-demographics, depression, alcohol misuse histories, body-mass index, and concurrent health conditions. In preliminary findings, 36% of respondents answered they would be willing to pay at least $300 for a hypothetical treatment with a 30% success rate, and multivariate analyses showed that males were 6 times more likely to pay for treatment than females. We are using ordered logit and generalized estimating equations to study how income, gender, smoking history, smoking related illness history, and other factors affect WTP. The results should inform future application of the WTP paradigm, help define the market for such smoking cessation, and establish a financial framework to indicate the level of costs that could be recovered from participating smokers.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the concepts behind the willingness to pay methodology. 2 Understand the amounts that smokers would be willing to pay for improved cessation treatments, and the implications for design and marketing of cessation programs.

Keywords: Smoking Cessation, Economic Analysis

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Not Answered