Accuracy of popular media reporting on tobacco cessation therapy in substance abuse and mental health populations

Background: Tobacco cessation therapy is not consistently provided for alcohol, drug abuse and mental health (ADM) populations, despite the enormous health consequences of tobacco addiction in these groups and research supporting the effectiveness of treatment. Policymakers, however, tend to rely on popular media reports rather than the scientific literature in regulating treatment. Our goal was to determine whether popular reporting accurately reflects findings from the scientific literature on tobacco cessation treatment for ADM populations in treatment.

Methods: We compared the results of systematic reviews on tobacco cessation therapy published before 2004 with articles published in traditional media and on the internet over the following 8 years. We searched LexisNexis and Google and assessed them using the Index of Scientific Quality (ISQ).

Results: We found that popular reporting on this topic was consistent with findings reported in contemporaneous scientific literature. Our results suggest that the failure to consistently provide tobacco cessation therapy to ADM populations in treatment is not due to poor research translation.

Conclusions: Our findings also suggest that in this topic area, scientific research findings have diffused relatively quickly. Further study of journalism in this area may suggest new strategies for effective translation of scientific findings into popular reporting on tobacco control.