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).

Wilson et al. BMC Public Health 2007 7:75   doi:10.1186/1471-2458-7-75