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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

Yale Smoking Study

Fact Sheet

September 2005

• Schools that would like to participate should call Dr. Suchitra Krishnan-Sarin at 974-7595.

• Dr. Suchitra Krishnan-Sarin, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Yale.

What is the program and what is its goal?

The goal of the study is to find out if a technique called contingency management works as smoking cessation intervention with teenagers. It already has been shown to work with adult smokers.

It's a one-month smoking cessation program in which we offer students rewards, in this case money, for staying abstinent. When we have contact with them to provide these rewards, we use these meetings as teaching moments to provide them with behavioral smoking intervention.

Why is CM needed?

Getting through the first week of a quit effort is difficult. By providing short-term rewards, CM helps teens focus on the now and reinforces the desired behavior, which is this case is abstinence from smoking. Participants who remain abstinent are rewarded with up to about $500 in gifts and cash over the course of four weeks. The compensation is equivalent to the income that most adolescents can earn by working part time jobs.

Previous research has shown individuals who attain some period of abstinence from cigarettes actually are more likely to succeed in the long run. This intervention helps them achieve this immediate period of abstinence.

Which high schools are participating?

The program is in

East Haven High School,

West Haven High School,

Foran High School in Milford,

the Milford Alternative Education Program,

Branford High School.

About to start in Lyman Hall in Wallingford

and Shelton High School.

These are the schools that responded to a mailing we sent out. For this phase of the program, we want to focus on schools in the greater New Haven area.

What do schools have to do to participate?

The schools only have to provide us with access and the facilities to do the daily appointments, where abstinence can be determined and therapy can be provided. The researchers do all the work and come out to the schools to do the program.

What do the students have to do?

Participants meet almost every day in the first two weeks, and then on a tapered off schedule in last two weeks. Students are not allowed to miss classes to participate; appointments are after school or during breaks.

How many people are participating?

So far about 60 students have participated. The researchers are seeking about 150 more students and are very interested in making contacts with high schools in the greater New Haven area that might want to participate.

How is it going?

We can't talk about specific results right now, because we don't want to skew the results. But we are confident that information from this study will give us more information to help teenagers quit smoking.