Racial and ethnic disparity in smoking cessation medication use among adult smokers in the United States
Xin Wang, Susan Abughosh, Ronald J. Peters, Ekere J. Essien
Abstract
Background: Smoking is a major avoidable cause of mortality and morbidity. Understanding the racial disparity in smoking cessation medication use among different racial groups can help us identify certain minority groups, who may have a barrier to receive smoking cessation medication and develop culturally appropriate interventions to these minority groups. Objective: This study aimed to examine racial/ethnic disparity in smoking cessation medication use among adult smokers in the United States using Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) data from 2009 to 2010. Methods: This study was a retrospective cross-sectional study using MEPS data from 2009 to 2010. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was performed to investigate racial/ethnic disparity in smoking cessation medication use controlling for predisposing, enabling, and need characteristics. The outcome of interest was a dichotomous smoking cessation medication use variable. Result: Total sample was 7881 (weighted sample size = 78, 268, 573), mostly comprised of non-Hispanic whites (72.92%), followed by non-Hispanic blacks (12.59%), Hispanics (9.37%), and others (5.10%). Among these smokers, 3.28% of them have used smoking cessation medication. Race was a significant predictor of smoking cessation medication use. In addition, we found gender, insurance, having a usual source of healthcare, obesity were also significant predictors of smoking cessation medication use. Conclusion: Our finding identified the potential minority groups, which had a barrier to use smoking cessation medication and some other significant factors which were associated with smoking cessation medication use. Further research can be investigated to find the reasons for this disparity, thus improving smoking cessation treatment outcome.