DPBRN Hygienists Internet Quality Improvement in Tobacco Cessation (HiQuit)

Overview

Our overall goal is to advance science related to using the Internet in health services delivery, and specifically smoking cessation by targeting dental hygienists. Our proposed intervention is the first Internet-delivered intervention to target the dental microsystem for smoking cessation-providing access to hygienists and patients.

This study is designed to allow dental hygienists and dentists to provide additional tobacco cessation counseling with little additional marginal effort. This would be done using an Internet-based referral to external resources. This system, termed "ReferASmoker", will allow hygienists and dentists to refer patients to a patient education, self-management website, "Decide2Quit" and accompanying Quitline, while the patient is still in the dental office. We anticipate that hygienists will be the primary drivers of this intervention. Our intervention has several innovations designed to support the dental practice in their tobacco cessation activities and maximize patient cessation rates. We will randomize 80 community-based primary dental practices into a clinical trial. Aim 1. To test hypothesis 1(H1)that the number of patients REFERRED to the self-management resource website will be larger in the intervention practices compared to control practices. Aim 2. To test hypothesis 2 (H2) that the proportion of patients referred who GO to the patient self-management website will be larger in intervention practices compared to control practices Aim 3. To test hypothesis 3 (H3) that the proportion of smokers who are referred who QUIT at six months will be larger among intervention compared to control because of the additional connectivity of the intervention.

Conditions

Interventions

Eligibility

Locations (2)

Outcomes