Discoveries
New program lowers smoking rates for blue-collar workers
Stop-smoking campaigns in the workplace traditionally haven't had much success among blue-collar employees. That may be changing as a result of a program tested by Dana-Farber researchers at more than a dozen Massachusetts manufacturing companies.
Their approach was unique in that it incorporated smoking-cessation activities into a broader program of occupational health and safety. According to researchers, the combination may have made the difference in the campaign's effectiveness.
The study aimed to redress a stubborn fact about smoking: although overall rates are down since the 1960s, the rate among blue-collar workers is significantly higher than among whitecollar workers. "There's evidence that although blue-collar employees attempt to quit smoking as often as other people do, they tend to be less successful," explains the study's leader, Glorian Sorensen, PhD, MPH, of the Center for Community-Based Research at Dana-Farber.
To test the new program, Sorensen and her colleagues randomly assigned 15 participating companies to one of two groups: those where smoking-cessation activities would be offered on a stand-alone basis, and those where such activities would be integrated into occupational health and safety efforts.
After two years, the investigators found that quit-smoking rates among blue-collar workers in the second group were more than twice those of their counterparts in the first group — and essentially the same as the quit rates among white-collar workers.
