With the help of students of the class of 2004 at Lake Stevens High School, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center has obtained landmark results from the Hutchinson Study of High School Smoking, the largest randomized trial of teen smoking cessation ever conducted.  The study for the first time demonstrated that it is possible to:

Successfully recruit and retain a large number of adolescent smokers from the general population into a smoking intervention study.

Significantly impact rates of six-month continuous quitting through personalized, proactive telephone counseling.

“This is the first youth smoking cessation trial to report statistically significant increases in six-month prolonged abstinence, as measured a full 12 months after the start of the intervention, among a large population of teen smokers in a non-medical setting,” said Arthur V. Peterson, a member of the Hutchinson Center’s Public Health Sciences Division and lead author of the paper that reported the results of the Hutchinson Study of High School Smoking.

Students in the class of 2004 — both nonsmokers and smokers, and with their parents’ permission — were invited to participate in the study.  As juniors, they participated in an in-class baseline survey, and then were followed by mailed survey one year post-high-school graduation to learn about changes over time in their attitudes and practices with regard to smoking and nonsmoking.

“We admiringly applaud, and thank, the administrators and staff of Lake Stevens High School and the class of 2004 and their parents, for their terrific interest and cooperation, which were so essential to the success of this pioneering study,” Peterson said. “Their strong support and cooperation made it possible to rigorously evaluate the effectiveness of the study’s innovative, proactive, personalized telephone-counseling approach to youth smoking cessation. We are delighted with this study and its results,” he said.