Health and behavioral predictors of success in an intensive smoking cessation program for women

Cigarette smoking is the major addiction of women, the leading cause of women's death, and maternal smoking has substantial negative health effects on children. The majority of smokers quit on their own, but women are more likely than men to seek help, and some prefer women-only programs. Multi-component programs combining cessation techniques with counselling, skills training, and emotional support show the highest quit rates. In this clinical study of a multi-component, eight week cessation program for women, sixty-two percent completed the program and stopped smoking. Over half of these were abstinent six months later, which compares favorably with other women's-only programs in Canada. Based on the literature, we hypothesized that factors related to personal health status, family drug history, current lifestyle and social environment would be the best predictors of program outcome: dropping out of the program, completing the program and quitting smoking, and being abstinent at six months. Over 400 measures of personal and family history, health status, health behavior and social environment were gathered. A multiple regression model using four variables with additive variance and stable parameters explained 48% of the variance in program outcome. These were client's history of asthma, smoking status of the mother when the client was a child, weekly consumption of chocolate and candy, and the number of children the client had. These results identify issues that need to be taken into account when assisting women to quit smoking.