§ Mr. BaronTo ask the Secretary of State for Health what assessment he has made of the validity of the four-week follow-up in determining the success of smoking cessation programmes. [176102]
§ Miss Melanie Johnson[holding answer 27 May 2004]We considered whether to monitor the success of clients using the national health service stop smoking services at longer intervals than four weeks, such as six months and one year, but decided that this would present practical difficulties for the stop smoking services, after a trial of monitoring at 52 weeks which produced high lost-to-follow up rates.
We have research n place to evaluate how the services have performed in practice, the final results of which will be available later in the year. The preliminary findings of this work led the research team to estimate that around a quarter of those successfully quit after four weeks will still be abstinent after a year. These results are consistent with those of clinical trials used to guide the setting up of the services.