Abstract
The impact of four effective population-based interventions, focusing on individual behavioural change and aimed at reducing tobacco-attributable morbidity, was assessed by modeling with respect to effects on reducing prevalence rates of cigarette smoking, population-attributable fractions, reductions of disease-specific morbidity and its cost for Canada. Results revealed that an implementation of a combination of four tobacco policy interventions would result in a savings of 33,307 acute care hospital days, which translates to a cost savings of about $37 million per year in Canada. Assuming 40% coverage rate for all individually based interventions, the two most effective interventions, in terms of avoidable burden due to morbidity, would be nicotine replacement therapy and physicians’ advice, followed by individual behavioural counselling and increasing taxes by 10%. Although a sizable reduction in the number of hospital days and accumulated costs could be achieved, overall these interventions would reduce less than 3% of all tobacco-attributable costs in Canada.
Highlights
Smoking is one of the most important risk factors for the burden of disease
B) Interventions focusing on individual behavioural change: 2) Individual behavioural counselling (IBC) for smoking cessation
IBC was defined as a face-to-face encounter between a smoking patient and a counsellor trained in assisting smoking cessation
Summary
Smoking is one of the most important risk factors for the burden of disease. Tobacco use is responsible for high levels of morbidity and mortality. The second Canadian Cost Study indicated that the social costs for substance abuse in Canada are high, with a cost of $39.8 billion in 2002 [3,4]. Given the evident overload of tobacco-attributable social burden, tobacco control measures have gained more importance. The use of cost-effective tobacco control measures is the key to further reduce the burden of tobacco smoking [5,6]; for the field of substance abuse see [7,8,9]. Analysis of avoidable burden and avoidable costs of tobacco-attributable morbidity in Canada was necessary in finding such effective measures
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