Phone counseling helps teens quit smoking

SEATTLE, Oct. 15 (UPI) -- U.S. researchers say a proactive program offering personalized phone counseling helped teens quit smoking.

Two-thirds of the high school juniors identified and recruited by the program participated. Almost half of those participating, completed the program.

At the completion of the study, published in the online edition of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 21.8 percent of all smokers in the counseling group had quit for a continuous six months versus 17.7 percent of those in the comparison group.

The three-month, one-month and seven-day smoking abstinence differences between the counseling group and the comparison group were 3.3 percent, 6.8 percent and 7.5 percent, respectively.

"These results are critically important for supporting and stimulating our nation's search to find successful ways to help reduce smoking by teens and young adults," Arthur Peterson Jr. of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle says in a statement.

The study involved 2,151 smokers from 50 high schools in Washington. The phone counseling combined motivational interviewing -- which helps resolve ambivalence about change -- and cognitive behavioral skills training.