“LOOK AT YOUR HEALTH”: OUTCOMES ASSOCIATED WITH A COMPUTER-ASSISTED SMOKING CESSATION COUNSELING INTERVENTION FOR COMMUNITY COLLEGE STUDENTS

Community college students represent 44 % of all students enrolled in U.S. higher education facilities. To our knowledge, no previous smoking cessation intervention has targeted community college students. Previous studies suggest that a motivational smoking cessation intervention could be successful for young adult smokers. Combining motivational interviewing sessions with personalized health feedback is likely to increase participants ’ motivation to quit and movement through the stages of change. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of a smoking cessation program based on these premises. We designed a computer-assisted, counselor-delivered smoking cessation program that addresses personal health risks and readiness to change smoking behavior among community college students. A group-randomized, controlled trial was used to assess the intervention in a sample of 426 students (58.5 % females; mean age, 22.8 ± 4.7 years) from 15 pair-matched campuses. At the 10-month follow-up assessment, the cotinine-validated smoking cessation rates were 16.6 % in the experimental condition and 10.1 % in the standard care condition (p = 0.07). Our results indicate that our computer-assisted intervention holds considerable promise in reducing smoking among community college students