© 2004 American Public Health Association
Gary King and Sunny B. Nahata are with the Department of Biobehavioral Health at Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pa. My C. Vilsaint is with the University of Buffalo Medical School, Buffalo, NY. Anthony Polednak is with the Department of Community Medicine and Health Care at the University of Connecticut Health Center, Farmington, Conn. Robert B. Bendel is with the School of Nursing at Washington State University, Pullman, Wash. Correspondence: Requests for reprints should be sent to Gary King, PhD, Department of Biobehavioral Health, Pennsylvania State University, 315 East Health and Human Development, University Park, PA 16802 (e-mail: gxk14{at}psu.edu).
Objectives. We examined disparities in smoking cessation rates between African Americans and Whites from 1990 through 2000. Methods. We performed an analysis of smoking cessation with data from the National Health Interview Surveys of 30660 African Americans and 209828 Whites, 18 to 64 years old, with adjustment for covariates in multiple logistic regression models. Results. Whites were significantly more likely than African Americans to be former smokers, and this disparity in the quit ratio persisted from 1990 through 2000. After adjustment for covariates, disparities were substantially reduced especially among women. Among former smokers, African Americans were significantly more likely than Whites to have quit successfully within the past 10 years. Conclusions. Statistical adjustment for covariates reduces African AmericanWhite disparities in quit ratios, and recent cessation patterns suggest possible future reductions in disparities.
Previous studies in the United States have shown that tobacco consumption has generally decreased among all racial/ethnic groups.1,2 Although prevalence had been higher in African Americans than in Whites since at least 1965,3 recent data indicate that the proportions of current smokers are now similar.1 Among African Americans, smoking prevalence has not decreased uniformly across all demographic groups (e.g., gender, nativity, and region).2,4,5 Rather than "racial/ethnic group," the term "racially classified social group" (RCSG) was employed in this article to emphasize that "race-ethnicity" as self-reported by survey respondents is not viewed as a biological or genetic construct with implications of immutable group differences based on phenotypic observations such as skin color. The idea of human populations as social groups recognizes the social character of human evolution and diversity rather than the classifications upon which fixations of "race biology" are imputed.68 Since the mid-1980s, public health efforts have increasingly promoted cessation initiatives targeting African Americans.9,10 Epidemiological research on smoking cessation has revealed that African Americans are less likely than Whites to make successful quit attempts,1,11 although they are no less likely to want to quit.10,12,13 A study of National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) data found increasing quit ratios from 1965 to 1991 for both African Americans and Whites as well as a persistent difference between these 2 groups.14 Pierce et al., in an analysis of 19741985 NHIS data, found a greater disparity in the rate of change in smoking cessation between African American and White men than that of African American and White women.15 In contrast, a longitudinal study during 19851995 of young adults (1835 years old) in 4 cities by Kiefe et al. did not find an African AmericanWhite difference in cessation after control for socioeconomic status.16 An analysis of the influence of gender and race/ethnicity on cessation (which did not control for socioeconomic status) concluded that the age of initiation could obscure differences in cessation behavior.17 Intervention studies and clinical trials have observed different outcomes in the quitting behavior of African Americans and Whites.1820 Some researchers have found effective pharmacological treatment targeting African Americans,21 whereas others have suggested genetic explanations for these variations.6,2225 To our knowledge, ours is the first study to analyze differences in the quitting behavior of African American and White Americans during 19902000. Using NHIS data for 1990 to 2000, our study examined different measures of quitting behavior and explored differences between African Americans and Whites. One implication of this analysis is that it may foreshadow future rates of smoking-related diseases and health disparities. The results may also be useful in developing more effective policies and interventions targeting specific groups of smokers.
The NHIS is a national cross-sectional household survey of health behavior consisting mostly of personal interviews of noninstitutionalized civilians. The survey has a stratified cluster probability sample design that oversamples African Americans and Hispanics. Additional information about the design of the NHIS has been previously reported.26,27
Although the NHISs are not longitudinal surveys, the multiple-year cross-sectional data they yield may indicate general trends. The specific NHIS data sets used in this analysis are 1990, 1991, 19931995, and 19972000 (Table 1
Most epidemiological analyses of cessation have been limited to self-report data. Studies have generally found self-report to be valid even when compared with biochemical measures, although some differences in misclassification have been observed between African Americans and Whites.28,29 The quit ratio is conventionally defined as the proportion of ever smokers (i.e., current and former) who are former smokers.17,30 Although frequently used as a point prevalence estimate of cessation in cross-sectional studies, the conventional quit ratio (CQR) has been found to be problematic.17 The proportion of ever smokers who quit for at least 12 months was used as the successful quit ratio (SQR), as 1 year of complete cessation is generally recognized as a "gold standard" in determining successful quitting.3,30 Most of the analyses of quit ratios are limited to the SQR. In view of the historical difference in cessation rates between African Americans and Whites, we analyzed more recent versus longer durations of successful quitting. The recency of successful quitting (i.e., for 1 year or more) among former smokers was categorized as 10 years or fewer versus more than 10 years (from the time of the NHIS interview), as our analysis showed that there were no differences in study results between quitting in the past 1 to 5 years and quitting in the past 1 to 10 years. The 10-year threshold or interval has also been used by other investigators.1,3,16,31 For individual survey years between 1990 and 2000, we calculated the proportion of former smokers who successfully quit within the last 10 years, as it extended our analysis before the 1990s.
The independent categorical variables were gender, age (1824 years, 2534 years, 3544 years, 4554 years, and The SAS32 and the SUDAAN33 computer programs were used for data analysis. SUDAAN was used to calculate the correct standard errors for the complex survey design of the NHIS. In implementing SUDAAN, the mildly conservative option used the "With Replacement" design with the "Logistic Procedure." Output from the program included the standard error of the logistic regression coefficient, the quit ratios, confidence intervals, and the "design effect," calculated as the ratio of the variance of the estimator to the variance of the estimator assuming a simple random sample.33 Odds ratios and 95% confidence limits for the odds ratios were also obtained. Cross-tabulations were used to assess bivariate relationships between the response variables and the sociodemographic predictors (i.e., age, gender, education, geographic region, and marital status) included in the multivariate analyses.
For Figures 1
In discerning the presence of an RCSG-by-time interaction, a exact procedure is cumbersome because of the problems associated with combining multiple years of NHIS data. Moreover, as noted in Botman and Jack,27 it is not possible to model the correlation over time for some primary sampling units, which occur every year in the NHIS survey. Instead, the approach here estimates the frequency of quitters versus nonquitters by using the SE and design effect (DEFF) output from each year separately. Specifically, and by definition, DEFF = SE x SE/VARSRS, where VARSRS is the variance of a simple random sample. For binomial sampling, VARSRS = QR x (1 QR)/ ne, where QR represents the quit rate expressed as a proportion and ne is the associated effective sample size. To illustrate, consider the conventional quit ratios profile in Figure 1 For the multiple logistic regression (MLR) analysis, 3 separate models were constructed using the following dependent variables: (1) current versus former smoker; (2) current versus former smokers by RCSG and gender; and (3) former smokers who successfully quit within 10 years of an NHIS survey year (more recently) compared with more than 10 years (longer term cessation). Age of initiation was only available for a limited number of NHIS years. It was used as a covariate for the years 19972000 in the model assessing successful quitting among former smokers.
Sociodemographic characteristics of African Americans and Whites remained stable throughout the 19902000 period, and the distributions were fairly consistent with the US Bureau of Census estimates between 1990 and 2000.
The proportion of former smokers among African Americans is on average 57% (14.6/ 25.8) the rate of Whites and declined by 2.9% (compared with 1.8% for Whites) from 1990 to 2000 (Table 1
Also, the rate of smoking decreased 2.9% and 1.7%, respectively, for African Americans and Whites (Table 1
Although annual fluctuations were observed (Figure 1a
Figure 1b
As shown in Figure 1c
Figure 2
The adjusted odds ratios for MLR models for each year predicting former versus current smokers are presented in Figure 3a
Among former smokers, the unadjusted and adjusted odds ratios show that African Americans were significantly more likely than Whites to have successfully quit within 10 years before each NHIS (Figure 4
Research on tobacco use and health disparities requires complex analyses so as not to obscure, overstate, or simplify differences. Our studys findings revealed both positive developments (i.e. quitting behavior within the past 10 years for African American former smokers) and continuing challenges in closing the smoking cessation gap between African Americans and Whites. Between 1990 and 2000, African Americans had a much lower annual average of former smokers (14.6%) than did Whites (25.8%), and this disparity increased slightly at the end of the decade. Using the higher standard of the SQR, we did not find any attenuation in the African AmericanWhite disparity between 1990 and 2000, nor did we find a significant RCSG-by-year interaction effect when 1991 (an outlier year) was excluded. Over the past decennial period, as larger percentages of African Americans (59.4% annual average compared with 48.7% for Whites) have refrained from becoming smokers, the prevalence of current smokers (even with the overall decline in African American former smokers) has diminished. Studies have attributed this pattern largely to cultural and social influences (e.g., parental prohibitions, social norms) that have limited smoking initiation among African American teenagers, women, and nonnative populations and in certain geographic regions.2,4,5,34,35 These results also suggest that cultural preventive influences have been more effective than cessation in reducing current smoking among African Americans.
The MLR models revealed that for each year, Whites were more likely to be former smokers compared with African Americans; however, for most of the post-1994 period, the adjusted odds ratios of African Americans and Whites for former versus current smokers were less than 1.5 (Figure 3a We speculate that as a greater number of older African American smokers die, it is likely that the pool of future smokers will be smaller and younger. It is possible that these individuals will make more successful attempts to quit because of less severe physiological addiction, improved socioeconomic status, greater concern about the consequences of smoking, and better access to cessation therapies. This proposition is consistent with studies that have observed a leveling off or reduction in gains via cessation36,37 as well as the size and the characteristics of the "hard-core" smoker population.34 It is also likely that cultural influences could have a considerable impact (e.g., changes in social norms about quitting, greater community effort and social network support to stop smoking) on future patterns of cessation among African Americans. Although African AmericanWhite differences in cessation continue to exist, they are reduced considerably if not eliminated after statistical adjustment for sociodemographic factors. Our results, like those of other researchers,2225 do not support genetic explanations for African AmericanWhite differences in quitting. Disparities in smoking cessation among RSCG are strongly influenced by socioeconomic status6,12,15,16,38,39 and do not appear to be a fixed attribute reflecting biological or genetic differences between African Americans and Whites. Our analysis has a number of important strengths. First, we are not aware of any other studies that have analyzed cessation patterns between African Americans and Whites for most of the years between 1990 and 2000. Second, we used the higher standard of cessation (i.e., 1-year SQR) and used multiple-year nationally representative samples that included a large number of African Americans. In addition, we adjusted for sociodemographic covariates to assess the disparity in cessation, although we could not adjust for racial discrimination or racism, as these variables were not collected by the NHIS. This study also has several limitations. First, NHIS data on cessation are derived from self-report, and although there is evidence to support the validity of self-reported smoking measures, there may be some differences in reporting of cessation.28,29 Second, as noted earlier, these data are from annual cross-sectional samples and are not cohort or longitudinal studies, and therefore considerable caution must been exercised regarding any causal or temporal inferences.26,27 Third, quitting behavior has been shown to be inversely related to the number of cigarettes consumed per day, and African Americans smoke on average fewer cigarettes daily than Whites1; however, data on the number of cigarettes smoked at the time of quitting were not collected by the NHIS for former smokers. Fourth, we note that recidivism among former smokers could potentially affect the results from year to year.40,41 Fifth, data from the NHIS are based on noninstitutionalized populations and excluded persons such as incarcerated individuals,2,5 a population that includes a disproportionate number of African American men who are likely to have higher-than-average smoking rates. If these populations were counted, the quit ratios would likely be lower than estimates derived from the NHIS, and smoking prevalence rates would probably be higher. It should be noted that quit ratios are crude indicators that are typically unadjusted for sociodemographic differences, and they do not explain disparities by RCSG. Also, because many former smokers stopped long ago, quit ratios reflect recent patterns of quitting as well as long-term cessation trends,2,17 and the ratios of Whites have been higher historically than those of African Americans.
Moreover, neither the quit ratios nor other analyses account for a factor that may systematically overestimate quitting by time period among African Americans in cross-sectional studies, namely, the impact of excess mortality. Because of the disproportionately greater mortality from lung cancer and some other smoking-related diseases (especially among African American men),42,43 the denominators (i.e., ever smokers) of the quit ratios for African Americans are likely to be proportionally smaller than those of Whites. As a result, such estimates of cessation may artificially inflate the rate of quitting among African Americans. The problem of overestimation would be relatively less important at younger ages (as shown in Figure 2b The process of cessation is both an individual and a collective experience. On the individual level, social, physiological, and psychological factors converge to motivate people to stop smoking, sustain them through the withdrawal process, and help them to resist the temptation to relapse.44 On the collective or societal level, public policies regarding tobacco control (i.e., excise taxes, restrictions of sales, smoking prohibitions), social institutions (e.g., medical and health organizations, schools), innovations in cessation strategies (e.g., nicotine-replacement therapies, media communications), and organizations (e.g., unions, antismoking coalitions, civic groups) have contributed to a broad social consensus against tobacco consumption in American society.1 During the past decade and longer, public health efforts have increasingly targeted high rates of smoking among African American adults9,44,45 with community-based interventions (both prevention and cessation) emphasizing multidisciplinary and culturally appropriate strategies. In addition, many African American communities have engaged in activism against tobacco industry promotional campaigns (e.g., Uptown brand cigarettes and billboard advertisements in minority communities) and in community awareness projects that have stimulated debate as well as alliances between African American social, civic, and health organizations.26,46,47 For the foreseeable future, differences in quitting as conventionally measured will likely persist, because the historical imbalances and sociodemographic correlates of quitting may not be quickly or easily rectified. In addition to the longer-term goal of eliminating social inequities, addressing the disparity in cessation will require more immediate strategies such as increasing the number of cost-effective and accessible interventions targeting specific groups of African Americans.
This article was supported in part by the Minority International Research Training Program of the Fogarty International Center (grant 5 T37 TW00113-05). The authors would like to acknowledge Farzad Noubary and Paul Mowery for their substantive comments on earlier drafts of the article. We also thank Ellen Humphrey and Tamika Gilreath for their editorial assistance.
Human Participant Protection
Peer Reviewed
Contributors Accepted for publication November 19, 2003.
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