Disseminating a smoking cessation intervention to childhood and young adult cancer survivors: baseline characteristics and study design of the partnership for health-2 study

BACKGROUND: Partnership for Health-2 (PFH-2) is a web-based version of Partnership for Health, an evidence-based smoking cessation intervention for childhood cancer survivors. This paper describes the PFH-2 intervention and baseline data collection. METHODS: 374 childhood and young adult cancer survivors were recruited from five cancer centers and participated in the baseline assessment. At baseline, participants completed measures of their smoking behavior, self-efficacy and stage of change for quitting smoking as well as psychological and environmental factors that could impact their smoking behavior. RESULTS: At baseline, 93% of survivors smoked in the past seven days; however, 89% smoked a pack or less during this period. Forty-seven percent were nicotine dependent, and 55% had made at least one quit attempt in the previous year. Twenty-two percent of survivors were in contemplation for quitting smoking; of those 45% were somewhat or very confident that they could quit within six months. Sixty-three percent were in preparation for quitting smoking; however, they had relatively low levels of confidence that they could quit smoking in the next month. In multivariate analyses, stage of change, self-efficacy, social support for smoking cessation, smoking policy at work and home, fear of cancer recurrence, perceived vulnerability, depression, BMI, and contact with the healthcare system were associated with survivors' smoking behavior. DISCUSSIONS/CONCLUSIONS: A large proportion of the sample was nicotine dependent, yet motivated to quit. Individual- interpersonal- and environmental-level factors were associated with survivors' smoking behavior. Smoking is particularly dangerous for childhood and young adult cancer survivors. This population may benefit from a smoking cessation intervention designed to build self-efficacy and address other known predictors of smoking behavior.