Snohomish County News
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Carol Robinson uses a pocket knife to carve a pumpkin for the pumpkin carving contest as her daughter Charlotte, 14, gives advice during the Snohomish Festival of Pumpkins on Oct. 24. The festival concluded with the Snohomish River Great Pumpkin Race, where 310 pumpkins floated down the river from Cady Park to the Avenue D Bridge.
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Mariner students help researchers find way to assist teens to quit smoking
MUKILTEO- With the help of the 2004 seniors at Mariner High School, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center says it has found a way to significantly impact young people’s ability to stop smoking through personalized phone counseling.
Student smokers who have access to telephone counselors were 4 percent more likely to quit for six months than those without counseling, according to a study published by the cancer center in the Oct. 12 online edition of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. According to the study, 22 percent of students with access to counseling quit for six months, as opposed to 18 percent of students without access.
Mariner High School was one of the 25 schools in the six-month study that used the telephone counseling.
“We admiringly applaud and thank the administrators and staff of Mariner High School and the class of 2004 and their parents for their terrific interest and cooperation, which were so essential to the success of this pioneering study,” said Arthur Peterson, lead author of the study. “Their strong support and cooperation made it possible to rigorously evaluate the effectiveness of the study’s innovative, proactive, personalized telephone counseling approach to youth smoking cessation.
“We are delighted with this study and its results,” Peterson said.
Telephone counseling also helped students who quit smoking for shorter amounts of time. Students were 3 percent more likely to quit for three months, 7 percent more likely to quit for one month and 8 percent more likely to quit for a week, according to the study.
The counseling was designed to motivate a student to quit as well as give them the tools they need to quit.
“A counselor would never say, ‘I want you to quit smoking,’” said Kathleen Kealey, who also worked on the study. “Instead, the counselor would ask what the behavior means to the participant. What do they like about it? What don’t they like about it?”
The counseling gave students healthy ways to deal with stress and smoking triggers, as well as someone to collaborate with on a plan for quitting.
“In the end, it is the smoker’s own reasons and desire to quit that motivate the quit attempt,” Kealey said.
The National Cancer Institute funded the study.
By LINDSAY TOLER
Published Oct. 28, 2009