DPBRN Hygienists Internet Quality Improvement in Tobacco Cessation (HiQuit)

This study is designed to allow dental hygienists and dentists to provide additional tobacco
cessation counseling with little additional marginal effort. This would be done using an
Internet-based referral to external resources. This system, termed "ReferASmoker", will
allow hygienists and dentists to refer patients to a patient education, self-management
website, "Decide2Quit" and accompanying Quitline, while the patient is still in the dental
office. We anticipate that hygienists will be the primary drivers of this intervention.
Our intervention has several innovations designed to support the dental practice in their
tobacco cessation activities and maximize patient cessation rates. We will randomize 80
community-based primary dental practices into a clinical trial.

Aim 1. To test hypothesis 1(H1)that the number of patients REFERRED to the self-management
resource website will be larger in the intervention practices compared to control practices.

Aim 2. To test hypothesis 2 (H2) that the proportion of patients referred who GO to the
patient self-management website will be larger in intervention practices compared to control
practices

Aim 3. To test hypothesis 3 (H3) that the proportion of smokers who are referred who QUIT
at six months will be larger among intervention compared to control because of the
additional connectivity of the intervention.

Inclusion Criteria:

- Community-based practices with internet access available in the office seeing an
average of five or more smokers in a week.

Exclusion Criteria:

- Exclude practices that have ongoing computer-based smoking cessation programs for
patients.