No Butts About It

North Dakota Tobacco Quitline Works

“If I would have known it would be this easy to quit, I would have done it years ago,” said July Anderson of Jamestown.  “The North Dakota Tobacco Quitline has been just great.” 

Anderson smoked for nearly 30 years, but was scared to try to quit.  It took her husband three times going cold turkey to quit and she thought it would just be too hard.  Then she saw an ad in the local paper for the North Dakota Tobacco Quitline.

“They counseled me through the whole time,” said Anderson, who has been smoke-free for a year now.  “I had a slip-up my first week and I was so angry, but the counselor assured me and said not to let it set me back.”

Every Year Smoking Kills More Than 800 North Dakotans. Now the 20 percent of North Dakotans who currently use tobacco products have help so they don’t meet the same fate.  The North Dakota Tobacco Quitline, located at the UND School of Medicine and Health Sciences Department of Community Medicine, provides help to North Dakotans who are ready to quit using tobacco products. 

The joint project with the North Dakota Department of Health and the Mayo Clinic Nicotine Dependence Center began in September of 2004 and has shown tremendous results in its first year. 

Just Pick Up the Phone

“I think this is one of the best things that we have done in the state,” said Nancy Thoen, tobacco prevention coordinator at the Central Valley Health Unit in Jamestown.  “It is so nice to be able to hand someone a tool they can use immediately.”

With one simple call, North Dakota smokers and spit-tobacco users receive

free counseling and resources to quit and remain tobacco-free.

Quitline callers receive up to five telephone counseling sessions with professional counselors trained at the Mayo Clinic Nicotine Dependence Center in Rochester, MN.  The counselors help callers set a quit date, discuss ways to deal with withdrawal symptoms that include proper medication use, teach them about triggers and strategies for staying tobacco-free and provide ongoing support and encouragement.

“No one can tell you that it is time to quit,” said Ron Hanson of Fargo who decided to quit after smoking for 50 years and has been smoke-free for eight months.  “You have to reach a point when YOU want to quit.”

Hanson saw a commercial on TV for the Quitline and called for more information.  Although he had tried a work-based program thirty years ago, he was impressed by all the information about nicotine addiction the North Dakota Tobacco Quitline provided and he still looks at it occasionally. 

Scott Leishman, a UND student who has been smoke-free for seven months, agrees.  After trying to quit cold turkey a time or two, he says it was the information provided by the Quitline on the terrible effects of smoking that woke him up.

“They laid it on hard,” he said.  “I was pretty certain I would get one disease or another if I kept smoking.” 

“We are so fortunate to have the Quitline in North Dakota,” said Pat McGeary, tobacco prevention coordinator of the Bismarck-Burleigh Public Health Department.  “To have that easy access to help is essential for North Dakota residents.  They don’t need to travel, make appointments or find childcare.  It is really good for rural North Dakota.”

John Baird, M.D. (B.S. Med. ’76, Family Practice Residency ’81), clinical associate professor of family medicine at the UND medical school, Fargo, agrees.  “The Tobacco Quitline is great for areas that don’t have cessation clinics,” he said. 

“It is also nice that we are able to do it right here within the state,” said Baird who works with Fargo-Cass Public Health and the North Dakota Department of Health.  Some quitline programs contract their telephone counseling to out-of-state firms.  “The North Dakota Tobacco Quitline counselors are right there at the medical school.  They know our communities and are part of our communities.”   

Cessation Success

During its first year, the North Dakota Tobacco Quitline answered nearly 3,000 calls to its toll-free number and more than 800 North Dakotans enrolled for the free telephone counseling.

Nearly 40 percent of those people are still smoke-free six months after their quit date, and a third have remained smoke-free after a year.

“That success rate is truly amazing,” said Eric Johnson, M.D. (Family Practice Residency ’92), clinical assistant professor of community medicine and one of the medical directors for the project at the UND medical school.  “Smokers who try to quit without help typically have only a three to five percent success rate.”

Even among tobacco cessation programs, North Dakota’s has shown tremendous results.  Programs nationally have quite rates of 20 to 30 percent on average, according to Lowell Dale, M.D., associate medical director of the Mayo Clinic Nicotine Dependence Center and the Mayo Clinic Tobacco Quitline.

“The North Dakota Quitline has had an exceptional quit rate among its callers in the first year,” said Dale, who works with the telephone quitline tobacco cessation programs in New Jersey, Wyoming, and Minnesota as well as the North Dakota program.  “I think the factors making a difference in the North Dakota program are that the counselors spend the time necessary to get to know the caller, develop a comprehensive treatment plan and then provide follow-up calls as needed; and that Dr. Johnson and colleagues are very good at disseminating information about the Quitline throughout the state.”

To enroll is the program or to get more information call toll-free number at 1-866-388-QUIT (7848).

- Amanda Scurry

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