The 13th World Conference on Tobacco OR Health

Objective: Currently only a minority (up to 30%) of smokers make use of effective quitting strategies on a quit attempt. Most options for cessation support require the smoker to initiate contact. The aim of the study is to determine the cost-effectiveness of a telemarketing approach to recruiting smokers into telephone counselling for smoking cessation. This presentation provides preliminary data on smokers' uptake of the telemarketing of telephone counselling.

Methods: Households are selected at random from the Electronic White Pages for NSW, Australia and mailed an information letter about the study. Each household is contacted by telephone to establish if there is an adult daily smoker resident. If more than one smoker lives in the household one smoker is selected at random. Consenting smokers are randomly allocated to receive either proactive telephone counselling calls or a one-off mail-out of self-help materials. Participants complete telephone interviews at 4, 7 and 13 months post-recruitment. Non- participants are also asked to complete a brief interview for comparison purposes.

Results: In order to recruit the trial target of 1,200 smokers an estimated 40,000 households will be contacted. Almost half (47%) of the smokers contacted so far have agreed to participate in the study. Data will be presented on the demographic characteristics, quitting intentions and patterns of consumption of both the recruited sample and non-participants to date. These groups will also be compared with other Australian data on smokers' characteristics to describe which sub-groups of smokers are likely to respond to a telemarketing approach.