Purpose:

We propose to evaluate an invitation to participate in telephone-based cessation counseling for health plan members with and without chronic diseases who fill a prescription for smoking cessation medications. This proposal will test in an incremental fashion the combination of two existing but independent health plan programs: a pharmacy benefit that does not require cessation counseling and a proactive offer of smoking cessation counseling by telephone. In addition to testing this combination we propose learning more about the experiences of members who take advantage of the pharmacy benefit. It would be extremely valuable to understand in detail how a subset of members with and without chronic diseases learn about the pharmacy benefit, what decisions they face to use the benefit, and what changes they would make to the benefit as well as why they decided to quit.

Objectives:

1. To measure the proportion of members with and without chronic diseases that are willing to participate in telephone cessation counseling offered proactively after they fill a prescription for smoking cessation medication.
2. To use quantitative and qualitative methods to learn about the member smokers’ reasons for quitting and for obtaining the pharmacotherapy, their experiences with physicians and pharmacists, and their own quitting experience.
3. To measure the costs of proactively offering and providing telephone counseling to smokers filling a smoking cessation prescription.