Implementing Living Independent From Tobacco With Dyads of People With Disabilities and Their Caregivers: Successes and Lessons Learned.
Teach tobacco quitting to the client-caregiver pair, not the client alone.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Patton et al. (2020) ran LIFT, a tobacco-cessation program for adults with disabilities and their caregivers.
The pair attended together. Staff taught coping skills and quitting plans.
Afterward the researchers asked everyone what worked and what did not.
What they found
People liked learning side-by-side with their caregiver.
They said the coping-skills parts felt useful.
The team listed practical tips for running the course again.
How this fits with other research
Shearn et al. (1997) tried a short smoking-education class for adults with intellectual disability. Over half quit or cut down, but caregivers only watched. LIFT keeps the disability-friendly content and adds the caregiver as a teammate.
Bergström et al. (2013) paired caregivers and residents to boost daily steps. The extra steps were small, yet the idea of "staff and client together" carried forward into LIFT’s dyadic format.
Freeman et al. (2015) used ten autonomy-building sessions to move adults with ID from "I should quit drugs" to "I want to quit." LIFT borrows that motivational spirit and targets tobacco instead of illicit drugs.
Why it matters
You can copy the dyad idea tomorrow. Invite the caregiver to sit in, practice refusal skills, and plan smoke-free routines with the client. One course serves two people and doubles your social-support leverage.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
People with disabilities have more health complications and higher healthcare utilization related to tobacco use than people without disabilities. Yet, they are less likely to use tobacco cessation resources. Important to meaningful and lasting health behavior change are relationships developed in the home, workplace, and community. Some people with disabilities rely on paid and unpaid caregivers. Just like people with disabilities, paid caregivers are more likely to use tobacco, creating a unique opportunity to target smoking cessation to people with disabilities and their caregivers. Living Independent From Tobacco (LIFT), an evidence-based tobacco cessation intervention, was implemented with dyads of people with disabilities (n = 5) and their caregivers (n = 7). Qualitative analyses revealed that participants valued the dyadic approach and the opportunity to learn coping skills to help with smoking cessation. Lessons for offering inclusive health promotion interventions to people with disabilities and their caregivers are discussed.
Intellectual and developmental disabilities, 2020 · doi:10.1352/1934-9556-58.3.241