Researchers have found that clinically-based smoking cessation programs may not be enough to help Latino smokers with asthmatic children quit smoking. The study from The Miriam Hospital’s Centers for Behavioral and Preventive Medicine and Brown University showed that Latino parents with an asthmatic child were more likely to quit smoking when they received a culturally-tailored intervention that provided feedback about how much secondhand smoke their children were exposed to, compared to parents who followed existing smoking cessation clinical guidelines.
“Caregivers who continue to smoke despite their child’s asthma need an intervention that not only provides feedback about the harmful effects of cigarette smoke on themselves and their child, but also factors in their cultural values and readiness to quit,” said the study’s lead author, Belinda Borrelli, PhD, of The Miriam Hospital’s Centers for Behavioral and Preventive Medicine. “Our findings suggest that standard smoking cessation clinical guidelines alone may only have limited success with this population.”
The study, which appears in the February issue of the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, is the first to focus on smoking cessation in Latino caregivers of asthmatic children. Researchers targeted Latinos for the study because 16.5% of Latinos smoke, yet few smoking cessation programs have been developed specifically for the country’s largest minority group. In addition, asthma, which is exacerbated by secondhand smoke, is more prevalent among Latinos than other racial or ethnic groups.
Source: EurekAlert
