Tobacco Cessation in Public Housing

Overview

The inequity in cessation resources is at forefront in the recently enacted nationwide smoking ban in public housing facilities. The critical component lacking from the federal decree was a practical smoking cessation strategy to address the real-world needs of active smokers who maintain cigarette usage. The investigator's proposal is ideally situated for this contemporary moment when low-income smokers in public housing are signing leases describing the potential for smoking-related evictions and thus at least contemplating smoking modification. The investigator's project is centered around the residents of Baltimore City Public Housing which is among the larger-sized U.S. public housing agencies. Using a human-centered design (HCD) approach, the investigators are refining and testing a community-centric cessation strategy defined by two core elements: a) durable and jointly linked community/hospital infrastructure systems (remote cessation specialist staffing and drug supplies) and strong on-site (public housing) residential leadership commitment to cessation improvement. These dual features, along with adaptable elements that can be modified to a variety of local/national housing settings, defines how the investigator's project will overcome the implementation gaps defining failed smoking cessation efforts in lower-income settings. The objective of this project is to test the feasibility of the intervention package among local housing contextual factors that could impact both the acceptability and adoptability of the investigator's project. Using a collection of formative and implementation evaluation measures, the investigator's academic-community partnership project is well positioned to create an adaptable and customizable intervention that can be scaled in similar housing populations.

Lower socioeconomic populations continue to remain at high risk for tobacco use and suffer disproportionately from tobacco-related disease. Evidence is lacking of ways to optimally deliver behavioral and pharmaceutical-based cigarette smoking cessation interventions in real-world environments among disadvantaged cohorts where geographic, socioeconomic and technological disparities often undermine the effectiveness of evidence-based smoking cessation efforts. The investigator's study focuses on residents of public housing in Baltimore City, a population who face multiple socioeconomic stressors and of whom up to 1/3 are assumed conventional cigarette users. The investigator's project uses a partnership between the Housing Authority of Baltimore City (HABC) and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine to enact a remote (off-site) cessation program in two public housing complexes under the management of HABC. The investigator's program will institute evidence-based practices in an accessible manner for the residents at both sites. The investigator's program's key features include the remote recruitment, prescription, delivery and management of evidence-based nicotine pharmacotherapies, and provision of cessation counseling. To assess the feasibility of study design, the investigator's project specifically focuses on the following eight elements: a) recruitment of smokers expressing a motivation to reduce or quit smoking, b) Consent process, c) nicotine and non-nicotine pharmacotherapy selection, screening, prescription, delivery, storage management (participation education, side-effecting monitoring), and return of unused drug supplies, d) Administration and perceived utility of motivational interviewing regarding smoking reduction and cessation, e) Delivery of study reimbursement, f) Utility of weekly text reminders of study participation and final endpoint, g) acceptability of outcome measures, h) acceptability and evaluation of joint project oversight with community stakeholders. The project will enroll eighty participants to determine feasibility endpoints. All participants will receive the intervention, as preferred by community partners. Participants will serve as the participants own control, which in turn means that the investigators will compare the intervention's effect at an individual level. All participants will be offered over a 4-week period both a long-acting nicotine controller medication (varenicline or nicotine patch) and short-acting medication to address acute urges to smoke (nicotine gum/lozenge). Each week participants will be monitored and receive cessation-directed counseling. If medication questions or concerns arise, patients will have access to 24-hour phone support. The results of the project will be reviewed with participants, community partners and academic team.