More low-income African-American women smoke than the general population of women, a fact a Medical College of Georgia nurse researcher wants to change with a anti-smoking program that uses culturally appropriate education and interventions.

Jeannette Andrews, Ph.D., RN, FNP, assistant professor of community/ mental health nursing at MCG, has implemented a smoking-cessation program for African-American women in Augusta's Barton Village housing development.

As reported in the November 2002 issue of Pulse, the program began as a three-month pilot study. Now it has been funded for a year through grants from the Georgia Department of Human Resources and the American Cancer Society.

Called Sister to Sister, the program was adapted from American Cancer Society's Circle of Friends model, bringing together mothers, daughters, sisters and grandmothers who want to stop smoking.

Her pilot study recruited 15 women from their mid-20s to 60s in a three-month smoking cessation program.

Each woman had made an average of three attempts to quit prior to enrolling in the class.

She followed their progress for a year after the pilot study was completed, and recorded a 65 percent success rate in smoking cessation.

This month, Andrews officially kicks off an expanded program to 106 women in the community.

Asking women who live in the community to be facilitators helped the program's credibility, she said.

"The community facilitators are former smokers and credible leaders in their community. Their role is to attend the meetings with their participants and contact them weekly [about their progress]," she said.

Andrews attends all the meetings as the sole nurse educator, and a MCG researcher attends to help do weekly blood pressure checks. Nicotine patches are given out at no cost. Follow-up sessions provide support and help build confidence with the cessation process, she said.

Andrews said she often talks about second-hand smoke and its danger to children as a way to discuss stop-smoking techniques.

The women in the group "don't often realize smoking causes cancer and heart disease, but do attribute [that] smoking is bad for their children," she said.

"In an area survey of 240 women, only 70 percent believed that smoking caused cancer, 40 percent thought smoking . . . [contributed] to heart disease — but 95 percent believed that second-hand smoke was dangerous to the children."

Andrews discovered another positive by-product she hadn't planned for during the pilot study: Social and spiritual support generated from the group were extremely important in helping the women quit.

"The group turned it over to God and prayed regularly and used their spirituality in helping with their cessation process," she said.

Other initiatives Andrews has begun include a youth advisory board to spread smoking-prevention information to young people; smoking-prevention curricula at Barton Village Elementary School; a community message board in Barton Village to provide positive health messages; coordination with a federally funded program to cultivate community growth; and a program providing mentoring, tutoring, parenting classes, leadership programs and other services for low-income families.