Collaboration to Develop and Pilot Test a Community Health Advisor Smoking Cessation Program for Durham Public Housing Residents

Recent policy from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) mandates that all public housing units go smoke-free by August 2018. Residents in public housing units have little access to proven cessation interventions and support is imperative to increase quitting success and is currently lacking in these communities;' thus this mandate is causing stress without providing resources to quit. Using a Community Engaged Research (CEnR) approach, we propose to partner the Durham County Department of Public Health and the Durham Housing Authority to develop sustainable Community Health Advisor tobacco cessation program that can be implemented in public housing communities. To achieve this goal, we plan to build on our previous collaborations to 1) form a team of previously identified DHA residents who are activated to support smoking cessation among public housing residents who can serve as Community Health Advisors and deliver cessation interventions in DHA properties, and 2) co-develop and pilot test a Community Health Advisor smoking cessation program to promote linkages with cessation services and to provide cessation education to DHA residents. This collaboration builds on our previous work to understand barriers and identify solutions for supporting smoking cessation among DHA residents. We will work with Community Health Advisors to develop an intervention and conduct a pilot study with up to 30 participants, Our primary outcomes are feasibility and acceptability of the co-development cessation intervention. We will collect survey data for the pilot in REDCap. Potential risks of study participation include breach of confidentiality with regard to identifiable personal information and questions that might make participants feel uncomfortable.