© 2006 American Public Health Association DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2005.071035
Catalina Lopez-Quintero and Yehuda D. Neumark are with the Hebrew UniversityHadassah Braun School of Public Health and Community Medicine, Jerusalem, Israel. Rosa M. Crum is with the Department of Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Md. Correspondence: Requests for reprints should be sent to Yehuda D. Neumark, PhD, Braun School of Public Health and Community Medicine, Hebrew UniversityHadassah, PO Box 12272, Jerusalem, Israel (e-mail: yneumark{at}md.huji.ac.il).
Objectives. We explored racial/ethnic disparities in reports of smoking cessation advice among smokers who had visited a physician in the previous year. Also, we examined the likelihood of receipt of such advice across Hispanic subgroups and levels of English proficiency. Methods. We analyzed data from the 2000 National Health Interview Survey. Results. Nearly half of the 5652 respondents reported receiving smoking cessation advice from their doctor. Compared with Hispanics, and after control for a range of other factors, respondents in the non-Hispanic White (adjusted odds ratio [OR]=1.57, 95% confidence interval [CI]=1.2, 2.0), non-Hispanic Black (adjusted OR=1.44, 95% CI=1.0, 2.0), and other non-Hispanic (adjusted OR=2.19, 95% CI=1.3, 3.6) groups were significantly more likely to report receiving advice. English proficiency was not associated with receipt of physician advice among Hispanic smokers. Conclusions. Some 16 million smokers in the United States could not recall receiving advice to quit smoking from their physician in the preceding year. These missed opportunities, compounded by racial/ethnic disparities such as those observed between Hispanics and other groups and between Hispanic subgroups, suggest that considerably greater effort is needed to diminish the toll stemming from smoking and smoking-related diseases. This article has been cited by other articles:
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