Website of the Department of Health

This dataset provides information about the number of people who attended NHS Stop Smoking Services (SSS) and who set a quit date. The success rate of quitters is measured as those who have stopped smoking at the 4 week followup check by the SSS. The data was collected on a quarterly basis and aggregated to show results for the financial year 2003/2004 - the data for these quarterly updates can be found on the DH website :

Annual bulletin of Stop Smoking Services - (April 2003 to March 2004). The bulletin is in word and there is an Excel workbook containing a number of tables of the data collected.

• Statistics on smoking cessation services in England, April 2003 to March 2004

Quarterly bulletin of Stop Smoking Services (April to December 2004) -

• Statistics on NHS Stop Smoking services in England, April to December 2004

Guidance on Use and Interpretation

These data provide information about the clients attending Stop Smoking Services, and not information about the level of smoking in the general population. The Information Centre for health and social care have also produced some synthetic estimates on the prevalence of smoking and these are published on the Neighbourhood Statistics website.

When interpreting the data, the user should be aware that there are a number of factors which can affect the smoking cessation success rates - for example the funding and policies in individual areas

A client is counted as having successfully quit smoking at 4 weeks if he/she has not smoked at all between 2 and 4 weeks after setting the quit date (self report). The reason for adopting the "2 weeks after quit date" definition is to allow a period of "grace" in recognition of the fact that some smokers initially struggle but then manage to quit. (Some SSS also carry out Carbon Monoxide monitoring of exhaled air to confirm the quitting status of clients).

Latest publications

Statistics on NHS Stop Smoking Services for 2003/4 by Primary Care Organisation (PCO) and associated metadata were published on the Neighbourhood Statistics website on 29th July, 2005, as part of the Health and Care Domain . These are available as a downloadable file.

• Neighbourhood Statistics website (opens new window)

Background

The establishment and development of stop smoking services in the NHS is an important element of the Goverment's stategy for tackling smoking, in recognition that many smokers want to stop but find it hard to do so. This policy has been more recently restated in the NHS Plan and the NHS Cancer Plan with the stop smoking sevices playing a key role in achieving targets to reduce mortality from cancer and heart disease.

In July 2004, the Department of Health (DH) agreed new Public Service Agreement (PSA) targets with the Treasury. These include  tackling the underlying determinates of ill health and health inequalities by reducing adult smoking rates to 21% or less by 2010, with a reduction in prevalence among routine and manual groups to 26% or less. This target is significantly more demanding than the adult prevalence in 'Smoking Kills' (which was 24% by 2010).

Contacts

If you would like further information on Neighbourhood Statistics, please contact the team on 020 7972 6570 or email:

• nesstemp@ic.nhs.uk (opens new window)

For further details of the dataset, please contact the email box of:

• Smoking_Cessation_Leeds@ic.nhs.uk (opens new window)