Research by a team that includes SFI Omidyar Fellow Ben Althouse suggests that celebrity cancer diagnoses and resulting media coverage are a more powerful motivator in smoking cessation than other cessation awareness events.
The research team from San Diego State University, the University of North Carolina, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and SFI was led by SDSU research professor John W. Ayer.
As part of the study, published this week in Preventive Medicine, the researchers investigated the case of former Brazilian President Lula da Silva, who was diagnosed with laryngeal cancer in October 2011 and attributed his cancer to his long-held smoking habit. They analyzed both media coverage of smoking cessation and the public’s online search activity surrounding the event and compared it to coverage and search activity of other common smoking-cessation events such as New Year's Day and World No Tobacco Day.
They found that media coverage and cessation related queries reached record highs in the days following da Silva's diagnosis, but returned to normal soon after.
Says Althouse: "In practical terms, we estimated there were about 1.1 million more quit smoking queries in Brazil the month after Lula’s diagnosis than expected."
Read the paper in Preventive Medicine (December 2013)
Read the article in the Huffington Post (December 15, 2013)
Read the SDSU news release on Science Codex (December 9, 2013)