Innovative strategy to increase cessation attempts in African Americans

Cigarette smoking is the most preventable public health problem, and studies reveal disparities in tobacco cessation rates of U.S. racial and ethnic populations. Tobacco-related diseases disproportionately burden African Americans and their communities. Since tobacco cessation has significant and immediate health benefits, identifying culturally appropriate strategies to increase successful cessation among African Americans is an urgent public health priority. The African American Pre-Cessation Enhancement Intervention (AAP-CEI) is an innovative smoking cessation model that utilizes the principles of social justice and community capacity building in the delivery of pre-cessation services to an underserved, over-burdened, and oftentimes hard to reach community. The AAP-CEI is a stand-alone, one time intervention that utilizes a focus group methodology as a tool for recruitment and service delivery. This brief one time intervention is designed to accelerate a participant's progression toward cessation and is appropriate for residents of low-income communities who are chronically faced with multiple barriers impacting their ability to attend multiple session interventions which may diminish their opportunity to successfully quit smoking. The innovative AAP-CEI may significantly improve the cessation rates among African American adult smokers by increasing their readiness to quit, quit attempts and subsequent participation in existing cessation opportunities, such as attending local smoking cessation classes, accessing online smoking cessation programs, calling smoking cessation Quitlines, quitting cold turkey, utilizing nicotine replacement therapy, or seeking some other type of alternative cessation aid such as hypnotherapy, acupuncture, or stress reduction and relaxation techniques.