What do veterans service organizations' web sites say about tobacco control?

Little is known about veterans service organizations (VSOs) and their perspectives on veterans smoking or military tobacco control. Veterans have high smoking rates and many started smoking in the military, where a culture promoting use exists.

A qualitative content analysis of VSO Web sites was conducted to classify health topics and identify tobacco-related information.

Web sites were coded by trained raters from January to June of 2011. Data were entered, cleaned, and analyzed from July 2011 to January 2012.

Twenty-four active VSO Web sites meeting inclusion criteria were rated independently.

A comprehensive form was used to code 15 veteran-relevant health topics across multiple content areas/domains within the Web sites. Raters achieved 94.5% interrater agreement over nearly 5000 data points.

Health content was coded as present or not within multiple VSO Web site areas/domains. The frequency of coverage by each VSO Web site and the number of VSO Web sites that mentioned a health topic in different Web site areas/domains were tabulated.

A total of 277 health topics were addressed, with the top five being insurance/Tricare/Veterans Administration issues (28.2%), posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD; 15.5%), disability/amputation/wounds (13.4%), Agent Orange (10.5%), and traumatic brain injury (9.0%). Tobacco was mentioned four times (1.4%) across all 24 VSO Web sites, and smoking cessation was never addressed.

VSO Web sites provide little information on tobacco-related topics and none offered information about smoking cessation. Given the high rates of tobacco use among veterans and active-duty service members, and the interaction between smoking and PTSD symptoms and treatment outcomes, VSOs should consider making tobacco control and smoking cessation higher-priority health issues on their Web sites.