Testing of a web-based program to facilitate parental smoking cessation readiness in primary care

Objective: To test the efficacy of a self-administered web-based computer intervention designed to facilitate readiness to alter tobacco use or secondhand smoke exposure among parents of children visiting a pediatric primary care clinic. The computer program included an assessment of the participant's smoking behavior and personalized feedback.

Methods: Self-identified smoking parents of children presenting to a general pediatric outpatient clinic completed measures of motivation and readiness to cease smoking. Participants were then randomly assigned to complete the computer program or receive treatment as usual. One month after completing the intervention, participants were contacted either in person or by phone to complete measures of motivational readiness to engage in smoking cessation.

Results: Compared to treatment-as-usual parents, intervention parents reported increased readiness to change their smoking at follow-up. This effect appeared to strengthen, favoring the intervention condition, when analyses included only those participants who identified at baseline that they were contemplating quitting smoking in the next 6 months.

Conclusions: Results of this small study supported the integration of a brief computerized tobacco intervention in the pediatric primary care setting and provided some evidence for efficacy. Brief, self-administered, and computer-based interventions such as this can be disseminated and deployed at relatively little cost or burden to existing practices, which makes small effects more meaningful and justifiable. Future investigations should investigate this intervention with larger samples and with expanded measures of parent smoking behavior.