A new national smokefree law increased calls to a national quitline

BMC Public Health

Table 2 Summarised Quitline caller and advertising expenditure data by six-month period for 24 months before and 12 months after the new national smokefree law

Six-month time period	Registered callers (N)	Call rate per 100,000 smokers**	Callers who were Mâori (%)	First NRT vouchers issued from the Quitline (N)	Issue rate per 100,000 smokers**	Quitline advertising expenditure ($NZ 000s)	Caller registrations per $1000 expend-iture	First NRT vouchers issued per $1000 expend-iture
December 2002 to May 2003	19,398	2955	20.7	8968	1366	1852	10.5	4.8
June 2003 to November 2003	17,396	2650	22.3	8656	1319	1762	9.9	4.9
December 2003 to May 2004	15,072	2296	19.1	6619	1008	863	17.5	7.7
June 2004 to November 2004	16,614	2531	19.4	8174	1245	958	17.3	8.5
December 2004* to May 2005	16,119	2455	19.3	9937	1514	391***	41.2	25.4
June 2005 to November 2005	12,424	1892	19.6	7101	1082	943	13.2	7.5

* Month that the new law came into force.
** Rates are based on an estimated total population of smokers in New Zealand aged 18 years and over of 656,489 (based on rates from the 2002/2003 NZ Health Survey and 2004 population data estimates).
** The relatively low level of spending at this time was when the Quit Group were preparing to re-configure the Quitline Service (which started in early May 2005). This meant that there was a transitional period when the Quitline number was not included on advertising as staff were being trained in operational aspects of the new service. The re-configured Quitline Service involved discontinuing the use of an external call centre and having all incoming calls answered directly by the Quitline Advisors. In addition, follow-up support and advice (including mailed out information) became more customised to the caller's level of motivation for quitting smoking (based on a stage of change assessment).

ISSN: 1471-2458