Focus Groups Preliminary Information Maureen Black BSC RRT COPD Coordinator, Health PEI Anja Salijevic BSC CHES, Health Promotion Assistant, Canadian Cancer Society

Outline Purpose Objectives Selection Process Focus Groups Demographics Findings Next Steps

What was our purpose? Understand current cessation supports from the perspective of persons who had either  1. Received a Ottawa Model for Smoking Cessation (OMSC) intervention  2. Been referred to the Smokers’ Helpline (SHL)

Objectives Participate in a discussion about their experience with OMSC and/or SHL To understand their experience To elicit how OMSC intervention or SHL could be improved for patients/clients

Selection Process Participants were randomly selected from those who had received a OMSC with and without SHL follow up from both Primary care and Acute care.

Focus Groups Charlottetown April agreed to participate 4 attended Summerside, May agreed to participate 5 attended

Demographics Gender 4 Male 5 Female Age 0 participants yrs. 1 participant yrs. 7 participants yrs. 1 participant- Over 65 yrs. What is your highest level of education? 3 participants- Less than grade 12 2 participants- Grade 12 1 participant- Completed College 1 participant- Some university 1 participant- Some college courses *1 participant answered both some university and some college courses.

Do you currently smoke? Yes - 6 participants No - 3 participants How old were you when you first started smoking? yrs.- 8 Participants yrs.- 1 participant Does anyone in your household smoke? Yes - 7 participants No - 2 participants Demographics

Category of Questions Questions about tobacco use Information related to supports for quitting Smokers Helpline Information Advertising Impact Quit Kits Open sharing

Charlottetown Findings Cost of NRT’s expensive Not enough support after leaving the hospital Nicotine a strong addiction Participants appeared to value representation of ‘real live’ people rather than automated services. Follow up calls are working (IVR’s). However, there is a misconception that the calls are being made by the hospital vs Smokers’ Helpline. Have coupons in the Quit Kit packets Value representation of community connections in materials- PEI look and feel.

Summerside Findings The most common theme which came out of this session: People want a more personal relationship with those helping them quit. They like the packaging. Find the happy people give them hope of happy people, freedom to do anything after breaking free from the control. Smokers Helpline did not seem to be interested in them once they quit smoking- even if it was just recently. Need more support especially when initially quit.

Participant Quotes “ …the control the cigarette has over you, for example, not going to my kids baptism at church because you got to sit there a whole hour. You just don’t want to go in, or outside at a party smoking with people which I would never communicate with and I am outside freezing my butt off and that’s the control the cigarette has over me.” “….you know how you wake up in the morning with a smokers cough and breath and all that? I’ll tell you it feels some good not to have that and it feels read good.” “When I was Pregnant I quit and my dad got sick and I started again. My dad is going to die soon of cancer from smoking. So it’s an ongoing battle with smoking, it really is. I think the price of the patches and everything else have a big impact on people too. So people only have $10-$12 to go buy a pack of cigarettes and the price of the patch is what like $34.99 or something like that.” “Basically I never went too far by quitting before. And like my quit time is pretty short like I think I went a month and a half at the very longest. That’s over…see I’ve been getting growled at for close to thirty years now, you know. But I just can’t do it no more. I don’t know how to do it. I want you guys have some good help or whatever…” *some changes have been made to protect the identity of the participant

Next Steps OMSC to help determine the gaps and find ways to address them CCS and DHW will take participant information into account when dealing with promotion.