Population-level predictors of changes in success rates of smoking quit attempts in England: a time series analysis.

Introduction:
This article presents a time series analysis examining the associations between various population-level factors and the success rates of smoking quit attempts in England between 2007 and 2018. The study aimed to identify factors that have influenced quit attempt success, which could inform and evaluate policy decisions for maintaining or accelerating the increasing trend of quit attempt success.

Key Points:

* The study used time series analysis with Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average with Exogeneous Input (ARIMAX) modeling.
* The factors of interest included e-cigarette use for smoking reduction, NRT use for smoking reduction, tobacco control mass media spend, expenditure on smoking, prevalence of high motivation to quit, prevalence of lower socio-economic status, smoking prevalence, non-daily smoking prevalence, average cigarette consumption per day, average age of smokers, prevalence of roll-your-own smokers, prevalence of use of over-the-counter NRT during a quit attempt, prevalence of prescription medication use during a quit attempt, prevalence of face-to-face behavioral support use during a quit attempt, prevalence of e-cigarette use during a quit attempt, and prevalence of quit attempts.
* The licensing of NRT for harm reduction, greater e-cigarette use and prescription medication use during a quit attempt, and higher expenditure on tobacco control mass media were associated with higher success rates of quit attempts.
* Other factors, such as smoking prevalence, non-daily smoking prevalence, average cigarette consumption per day, average age of smokers, prevalence of roll-your-own smokers, prevalence of use of over-the-counter NRT during a quit attempt, prevalence of face-to-face behavioral support use during a quit attempt, and prevalence of quit attempts, were not significantly associated with quit attempt success.

Main Message:
The study found that the licensing of NRT for harm reduction, greater e-cigarette use and prescription medication use during a quit attempt, and higher expenditure on tobacco control mass media were associated with higher success rates of quit attempts in England from 2007 to 2018. These findings could inform and evaluate policy decisions to maintain or accelerate the increasing trend of quit attempt success in England.

Beard E, Jackson SE, West R, Kuipers MAG, Brown J. Population-level predictors of changes in success rates of smoking quit attempts in England: a time series analysis. Addiction (Abingdon, England). 2020;115(2):315-325. doi:10.1111/add.14837