Smoking cessation programmes using traditional medicine in Korea.

Soobin Jang,Eun-Kyoung Lee,Seong-Gyu Ko,Sunju Park,Yong-Cheol Shin,Seung-Ho Sun,Kyeong Han Kim,Ju Ah Lee,Yu Lee Park

doi:10.1186/s12906-016-1462-9

Abstract

BackgroundThere are growing interests in using various methods including traditional and complementary medicines (T&CM) for tobacco control. The study aimed to introduce how traditional Korean medicine (TKM) applied to smoking cessation programmes in Korea and to show the detail information of each programme for designing other smoke cessation programmes.MethodsReports of the smoke cessation programmes in Korea were searched on March 10th, 2016, from the webpages of the related agencies and the databases: the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the Korea Health Foundation, the Association of Korean Medicine, PubMed, Google scholar, the RISS, the KISS, the NDSL, and the OASIS. Smoking cessation programmes, projects, or services using traditional Korean medicine (TKM) were included with no language, implementation site, and year restrictions.ResultsThe three smoking cessation programmes using TKM in South Korea were the public health centre smoking cessation programme (PHC-SCP), the Ministry of Gender Equality & Family smoking cessation programme (MOGEF-SCP), and the National Health Insurance Service smoking cessation treatment project (NHIS-SCP). All programmes included ear acupuncture and counselling. Manual acupuncture was only used in the NHIS-SCP. The MOGEF-SCP and the NHIS-SCP used herbal medicines selectively. The PHC-SCP and MOGEF-SCP provided education programme and other tools such as non-smoking doll, self-writing handbook. They were run at no cost for participants. Treatment period were different for each programmes, 3 weeks, 4 weeks, 8 to 12 weeks, respectively. Treatment frequency was twice a week for PHC-SCP and MOGEF-SCP, and dependent on each clinic for NHIS-SCP.ConclusionsThis study showed the summaries of the smoking cessation programme that used TKM. The three programmes and the detail information will be a reference for other countries that are going to apply T&CM to their smoking cessation programme. Though TKM integrated smoking cessation programmes had been contributed to stop smoking, persistent efforts are needed to develop more effective and various treatments. In addition, this study suggests that consistent support and systematic reporting system are needed to be successful in non-smoking strategy.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12906-016-1462-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Highlights

There are growing interests in using various methods including traditional and complementary medicines (T&CM) for tobacco control
This study showed the summaries of the smoking cessation programme that used traditional Korean medicine (TKM)
The three programmes and the detail information will be a reference for other countries that are going to apply T&CM to their smoking cessation programme

Summary

Introduction

There are growing interests in using various methods including traditional and complementary medicines (T&CM) for tobacco control. Smoking related death is expected to increase to 8 million by 2030 if no proper smoking cessation policies are implemented [1]. The WHO developed the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) in 2003, which is the first international treaty on public health regarding the reduction of smoking related diseases and death. Since most smokers are dependent on nicotine, it is difficult to be successful at smoking cessation through drug therapy alone [6]. The success rate of smoking cessation can be increased when multiple methods are combined, such as counselling, education, complementary therapy, and regulatory policy [6]

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