SmokingPaST Framework: New Planning Tool Helps Employers, Towns and State and National Policymakers Determine Lives Saved, and ROI from Tobacco Treatment Efforts

Newswise — CLEVELAND, OH (September 1, 2011) – The newly released Smoking Prevalence, Savings, and Treatment (SmokingPaST) Framework is a tool designed to calculate the impact of investments in tobacco treatment programs on health and medical cost savings. The framework combines what is already known about the medical costs of smoking, the health benefits of quitting and the effectiveness of different quit methods. It can be used to help guide employers, city, state and national policymakers in making decisions about how to invest funds in tobacco treatment efforts.

An article published in the September/October, 2011 issue American Journal of Health Promotion describes the use of the framework for specific populations and quantifies the significant drops in smoking rates that can be achieved and medical cost savings that can be captured by employers as well as state and federal governments through tobacco treatment and prevention programs.

Selected Findings1. Employers - Not Hiring SmokersAn employer with 1,000 employees 15% annual turnover and a base line smoking rate of 20% who decides to not hire smokers will save $49 thousand in medical costs in the first year, $1.8 million in the first decade and $4.7 million by the end of the second decade. Additional saving would accrue from reduced absenteeism and elimination of cigarette breaks.

2. State of Ohio - Increase smokers trying to quit and quitters using best quit methods and decrease high school seniors smokingIf the number of people attempting to quit smoking every year in Ohio increased by 10%, 10% of quitters trying to quit cold turkey shifted to the best quit method, and the number of high seniors smoking dropped 10%, smoking rates in Ohio would drop to 13.4% by 2018; 8.7 million years of life would be saved; medical spending would be reduced by $8.2 billion dollars, at a cost of only $114/year of life saved and a return of $8.33 for every dollar spent on tobacco treatment. These savings would be accrued to employers ($3,3 billion), private households ($2.6 billion), the federal government ($1.1 billion), Ohio State Medicaid ($947 million) and other health care funders ($286 million). Note: The state of Ohio dropped its support for the free 1-800-QUIT-NOW telephone quit line in June of 2011, the only state in the nation to do so.

3. Nation: All smokers using best quit methods If all the smokers in the US who try to quit smoking were to use the best quit method, which includes a combination of behavior therapy and medication, smoking rates in the nation would drop to 4.9% by 2019 (from 21% now).

Smoking PaST Framework SpecificationsThe Smoking PaST Framework is a series of formulae. Input variables include baseline smoking rates among current adults, new adults, immigrants, and emigrants; population counts for these groups; annual quit attempts; and distribution of quit methods. Assumption variables include success rate by quit method, death rates of smokers and nonsmokers, annual medical costs of smoking, costs per person for four tobacco treatment methods, age distribution of quitters, and distribution of medical cost funding by source. Output variables include year-end adult smoking rates, successful quitters, years of life saved by quitting, medical costs saved by quitting and by not hiring smokers, total costs of smoking treatment programs, cost per quitter, cost per life-year saved, distribution of medical cost savings from quitting, and ROI of treatment costs.

More details on the SmokingPaST Framework and a working spreadsheet are available at no charge at: http://www.HealthPromotionJournal.com/SmokingPaST.html

ApplicationsThe SmokingPaST Framework can be used by employers, communities, states and federal planners to calculate the numbers of smokers they need to recruit into quit smoking programs, the treatment methods they need to use , and the funds they need to provide to achieve the smoking rates they desire. It also shows the cost effectiveness of using different tobacco treatment methods and the amount that will be saved for each level of smokers who quit, or who are not hired.

Authors• Michael O’Donnell, MBA, MPH, PhD, is Editor in Chief of the American Journal of Health Promotion in Troy Michigan.• Michael F. Roizen, MD is
Chief Wellness Officer and Joe Gorman and Family Chair of the Wellness Institute, at the Cleveland Clinic, and a faculty member at the Lerner College of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio

TERMS OF USE: This story is protected by copyright. When reproducing any material, attribution to the American Journal of Health Promotion is required.

 # # #Citation:O’Donnell MP, Roizen, MF, The SmokingPaST Framework: Illustrating the Impact of Quit Attempts, Quit Methods, and New Smokers on Smoking Prevalence, Years of Life Saved, Medical Costs Saved, Programming Costs, Cost Effectiveness, and Return on Investment. Am J Health Promo 26(1), 2011 e11-23.

Complete article is available here: http://healthpromotionjournal.com/ajhp-26-01-e11-e23%5b4%5d.pdf