This study is intended to contribute to the development of health promotion research with Hispanic populations. The investigators propose to test the effectiveness of two levels of culturally appropriate smoking cessation interventions for Hispanics by documenting smoking behavior using self-report and biochemical verification. The targeted population will be young adult Hispanic smokers living in the San Francisco Bay Area. This study will be conducted in two phases: (1) A needs assessment phase will be completed during the first year by comparing the subjective smoking culture of 450 Hispanic and 150 Anglo smokers. This will identify the important issues related to Hispanic smoking behavior that will be incorporated into developing a culturally appropriate smoking cessation intervention. (2) The development and pretest of a smoking cessation intervention for Hispanics based on culturally appropriate techniques like group cohesiveness. The intervention will then be tested in a randomized control trial with 1250 Hispanic smokers. One-half will be assigned to the Group Session Condition (four 2-hour sessions at weekly intervals) and one-half will be assigned to the Control Conditon (a pamphlet only). Participant recruitment will be supported by an anti-smoking media campaign in the Hispanic community. This will be developed to enhance the availability of smoking cessation interventions. Participants will be interviewed at 1, 3, 6 and 12 months about their smoking habits. At 12 months all participants reporting abstinence will have expired carbon monoxide and saliva cotinine determinations for biochemical verification. This study will have a power of at least .90 to detect a significant difference in rates of abstinence between the experimental and control groups. This study will also analyze the efficacy of the intervention in different subgroups of Hispanics and identify the predictors of participant success in quitting. If the smoking cessation intervention is proven to be effective, it will be entirely applicable to Hispanics in other areas of the country. This study will also provide a basis for further study and analysis of the effectiveness of the intervention's individual components.
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