Media campaigns to promote smoking cessation among socioeconomically disadvantaged populations: What do we know, what do we need to learn, and what should we do now?

Document Type

Article

Department or Administrative Unit

Communication

Publication Date

11-2008

Abstract

Little is known about whether media campaigns are effective strategies to promote smoking cessation among socioeconomically disadvantaged populations or whether media campaigns may unintentionally maintain or widen disparities in smoking cessation by socioeconomic status (SES). This paper presents a systematic review of the literature on the effectiveness of media campaigns to promote smoking cessation among low SES populations in the USA and countries with comparable political systems and demographic profiles such as Canada, Australia and Western European nations. We reviewed 29 articles, summarizing results from 18 studies, which made explicit statistical comparisons of media campaign effectiveness by SES, and 21 articles, summarizing results from 13 studies, which assessed the effectiveness of media campaigns targeted specifically to low SES populations. We find that there is considerable evidence that media campaigns to promote smoking cessation are often less effective, sometimes equally effective, and rarely more effective among socioeconomically disadvantaged populations relative to more advantaged populations. Disparities in the effectiveness of media campaigns between SES groups may occur at any of three stages: differences in meaningful exposure, differences in motivational response, or differences in opportunity to sustain long-term cessation. There remains a need to conduct research that examines the effectiveness of media campaigns by SES; these studies should employ research designs that are sensitive to various ways that SES differences in smoking cessation media effects might occur.

Comments

This article was originally published in Social Science & Medicine. The full-text article from the publisher can be found here.

Due to copyright restrictions, this article is not available for free download from ScholarWorks @ CWU.

Journal

Social Science & Medicine

Rights

Copyright © 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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