Proactive telephone counseling as an adjunct to minimal intervention for smoking cessation: a meta-analysis

Proactive telephone counseling is an effective adjunct to minimal intervention for smoking cessation, but its effect has not been quantitatively synthesized thoroughly. The present meta-analysis reviewed 22 studies published between January 1990 and December 2003 and found that there was a heterogeneous, significant adjunct effect of proactive telephone counseling for smoking cessation. This meta-analytic review also found that the following study characteristics explained most of the variation in the adjunct effect: year of publication, follow-up time, mean age of participants, proportion of female participants, participants' readiness to quit smoking and number of cigarettes smoked per day before intervention. In other words, based on the 22 studies, proactive telephone counseling is effective as an adjunct to other minimal interventions for younger, male, light-smoking participants. The results of this meta-analytic review imply that researchers and health care providers may need to focus on participants as much as on intervention process to obtain more effective interventions.