Comparing the New York State Smokers’ Quitline Reach, Services Offered, and Quit Outcomes to 44 Other State Quitlines, 2010 to 2015

Purpose: To summarize the reach, services offered, and cessation outcomes of the New York Quitline and compare with other state quitlines. Design: Descriptive study. Setting: Forty-five US states. Participants: State-sponsored tobacco cessation quitlines in 45 US states that provided complete data to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Quitline Data Warehouse (NQDW) for 24 quarters over 6 years (2010-Q1 through 2015-Q4). Intervention: Telephone quitlines that offer tobacco use cessation services, including counseling, self-help materials, and nicotine replacement therapy (NRT), to smokers at no cost to them. Measures: Percentage of adult tobacco users in the state who received counseling and/or free NRT from state quitlines (reach), services offered by state quitlines, and cessation outcomes among quitline clients 7 months after using quitline services. Analysis: Reach, services offered, and cessation outcomes for the New York Quitline were compared with similar measures for the other 44 state quitlines with complete NQDW data for all quarters from 2010 through 2015. Results: New York’s average annual quitline reach from 2010 through 2015 was 3.0% per year compared to 1.1% per year for the other 44 states examined. Conclusion: Although the New York Quitline was open fewer hours per week and offered fewer counseling sessions and a smaller amount of free NRT than most of the other 44 state quitlines, the New York Quitline had similar quit rates to most of those state quitlines.