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CENTURY
Yale University
School of Medicine
SAC-203
Connecticut
Mental Health Center
34 Park Street
New Haven, CT 06519

Phone:
203-974-7591

Fax:
203-974-7606

E-mail:
infocentury@yale.edu

CENTURY/TTURC Press Release

New Haven, Conn. - Smokers would be willing to pay for more effective smoking cessation treatments, particularly if they help smokers avoid weight gain that is often associated with quit attempts, according to a newly published survey from Yale researchers.

In the survey, policy researchers used a method called “willingness to pay” (WTP) to measure how consumers would value a new smoking cessation treatment. The survey shows that there would be a market for new smoking cessation treatments if they were more effective and if they were not associated with increased weight gain. People who were employed, women and the obese were among those either with a higher willingness to pay, or who were willing to pay more.

These results of the survey are significant for smokers, businesses that manufacture and market smoking cessation treatments, and insurers who make decisions about coverage of smoking cessation treatments. Also, employers would be interested to learn that smokers place a high value on these treatments.

“Some insurers cover smoking cessation products and some don't. Employers might look at these data and consider covering these treatments because their employees who smoke value it,” said Dr. Susan Busch, Ph.D., an assistant professor at the school of Epidemiology and Public Health at Yale and the lead author on the study. “Also, this might encourage pharmaceutical companies to spend more research and development money to find more effective smoking cessation products . ”

Dr. Busch is a researcher with the Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Center (TTURC) at Yale and the Center for Nicotine and Tobacco Use Research at Yale (CENTURY). The centers are conducting transdisciplinary studies on how to help smokers who have a hard time quitting. Many of the studies focus on women, people who drink or people who are depressed, since research shows that those are the groups that most often relapse.

Dr. Busch said the willingness to pay survey was prompted by her participation in the CENTURY/TTURC group. Dr. Stephanie O'Malley, a co-author on the study and the head of CENTURY/TTURC, is conducting a study into whether a drug called naltrexone can help people quit and if so, whether it can help them avoid weight gain. The prospect of gaining weight can be an obstacle that prevents people from trying to quit, Dr. O'Malley said. Results from Dr. O'Malley's clinical trial of naltrexone will be available later this year. Dr. Busch said discussions with Dr. O'Malley about her project prompted the willingness to pay survey.

Dr. Michael Fiore, M.D., MPH , director of the Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention and professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin Medical School, said Dr. Busch's study reinforced the need for new and effective treatments for smokers.

“For some smokers, the products that are available now are useful. But there are still many smokers who would love to quit, but can't without the availability of new treatments," Dr. Fiore said. "We hope that insurers will use this new information to cover smoking cessation medications just as they cover medications for other chronic diseases."

The citation for the article is: Busch, S.H., Falba, T.A., Duchovny, N. Jofre-Bonet, M., O'Malley, S.S., Sindelar, J.L. (2004) Value to smokers of improved cessation products: Evidence from a willingness-to-pay survey, Nicotine & Tobacco Research, Volume 6, Number 4, 631–639

The mission of CENTURY and TTURC is to conduct research to better understand why some tobacco users have difficulty quitting and how to help them quit. As part of this effort, Yale is focusing on several in-depth tobacco research projects conducted by a multidisciplinary team of scientists. The group also has numerous smaller projects, and a policy unit that conducts empirical, population-based and policy related research on tobacco use and tobacco control.

Yale TTURC is one of seven centers around the country conducting a wide variety of transdisciplinary tobacco-related research. One of the primary goals of the initiative is to encourage and support research that integrates theories and methods from different disciplines.