Smoking Cessation Interventions for LGBT Populations: A Scoping Review and Recommendations for Public Health

Abstract

Members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) community are at increased risk for health threats when compared to their peers, including significantly higher rates of cigarette smoking and tobacco use, conferring risks for preventable tobacco-related illnesses and cancers. Health disparities for this group are associated with social and structural inequities, stigma and discrimination. As such, there are systemic and societal barriers to accessing smoking cessation services and too few services aim to reach and engage these groups. To date, three reviews have systematically summarized the literature about smoking cessation programs in LGBT samples; one review focused on young adults only, one review is eight years old, and one was focused on Australian policy. We conducted a scoping review of the literature and identified 71 studies examining smoking cessation in LGBT groups. Implementation barriers included in these studies were coded by raters. No studies were found that summarized or describe implementation science models for smoking cessation programs for LGBT groups. The Dynamic Sustainability Framework provides a structure for disseminating and implementating recommendations from smoking cessation research for practical use with LGBT communities. Interventions exist at the individual, family, systems, and national policy levels. More research is needed to determine whether tailoring or targeting of interventions matters. Using the Framework for Knowledge Translation, we created an easily disseminable sheet of information for community partners about how to use the lessons learned from these research articles to increase access to smoking cessation for LGBT individuals and communities and to increase public health.