[Evaluation of a community intervention program ("Quit and Win") for smoking cessation]

In recent years community intervention plans for motivating smokers to stop smoking have been developed. One of these programs is the <> initiative of the World Health Organization. Our study evaluated the impact of this intervention in a sample of persons who participated in the 1996 edition of the program in Barcelona, Spain.

One year after the contest, a telephone follow-up survey was carried out in one-third of the participants. Subjects were questioned about their current smoking status and their participation in the contest, including motivation and whether they had remained abstinent throughout the contest.

A total of 941 valid cards were received from Barcelona residents, equivalent of 0.23% of all smokers. A selection was made of 307 persons for follow-up, 18 of which were excluded because they were former smokers. From the remaining 289 participants, we obtained valid responses from 196, 82 (41.8%) of which were abstinent when the survey was made. Participating in the contest with the intention to stop smoking permanently and continued abstinence throughout the contest period (one month) were significantly associated with abstention one year later. The overall agreement between participants' statements and the statements of a subsample (n=18) was 81.3%.

One year after the intervention the proportion of abstinent smokers was higher than in earlier studies. However, self-selection by the participation who responded to the follow-up questionnaire could have contributed to the final result. Overall, such initiatives could be useful in motivating predisposed persons to stop smoking.