Essay Example on Smoking Cessation Program: A Public Health Success

Introduction

Public health initiatives ensure that a health care system is well-functioning to maintaining the health of the vulnerable population, such as smokers. There are a lot of public health initiatives, but this paper will focus on the smoking cessation program. Smoking cessation program as a public health project is the process of ensuring that smokers are discontinued from smoking. People can adopt a lot of ways in an attempt to quit smoking, but, the most effective method is by the use smoking cessation programs that are evidence-based (Kruger, O'Halloran, Rosenthal, Babb, & Fiore, 2016). Smokers who participate in smoke cessation program are at higher chances of successfully quitting smoking when compared with those smokers who try to quit smoking by themselves. Currently, there are about 44.5 million smokers, of which 50 percent of them are attempting to quit smoking annually. Among the 50 percent who tried to quit smoking, seven percent (of the 50 percent who try to quit yearly) successfully stop smoking through the evidence-based smoking cessation programs while 90 percent relapse (Schoenborn, & Gindi, 2015). There is the availability of cessation programs, but these programs are not fully utilized because the smokers are unaware of these programs. It is crucial to apply economic principles such as scarcity, maximization, opportunity cost, and willing to pay to ensure smokers access the cessation programs.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

Application of Economic Principles in Smoking Cessation Programs

Willingness to Pay

High mortality and morbidity are related to heavy and regular smoking and involuntary exposure to cigarette smoke (Coward, Heitman, Clement, Negron, Panaccione, Ghosh, & Kaplan, 2015). Regular cigarette smoking poses a significant health risk to both active smokers and passive smokers and causes an economic burden on the health-care systems. Smokers who are ready and willing to stop smoking are informed about the benefits associated with quitting for the sake of their health and the health of those surrounding them. Therefore, those around the smoker who is willing to quit would value the program, which is beneficial to them, and they will have a higher willingness to pay for that program (Getzen, 2016). The willingness to pay could be used to identify the monetary values of the beneficial programs then compare them with the adverse effects of not using the program.

Opportunity Cost

The principle of opportunity cost is essential in the health economist's view of health care costs. The opportunity cost of financing smoking cessation programs can be measured by the health benefits associated with the program. These benefits include live years saved and the Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALY) (Mankiw, 2016). Thus, the cost-effective analysis of smoking cessation program is supposed to reflect the benefits of initiating a public health program. This principle incorporates the aspects of cost and benefit irrespective of the person who will incur the expenses and the one who will benefit from the intervention program (Newcomer, Hatry, & Wholey, 2015). Smoke cessation program can be less costly when compared to other public health initiatives. In reality, the outcome of the program determines the cost of the public health initiative.

Marginal Cost and Marginal Benefits

Marginal cost and benefits are essential concepts in any public health initiative because they provide essential information about the value and benefits of a public health program whose aim is to reduce the burden of lifestyle diseases (Mishan, 2015). Decisions are always made based on the evaluation of both the marginal cost and marginal benefits. The connection of marginal benefits and marginal cost assist in the understanding of the benefits that are associated with the cost incurred (Battistoni, Genco, Marsilio, Pancotti, Rossi, & Vignetti, 2016). The main idea in marginal cost and benefits is whether the smokers will cease to smoke if the smoking cessation program was implemented, and smokers are made aware of this initiative.

Contributions of Economic Principles in the Success of Smoking Cessation Initiative

According to Scholz, Dorner, Franz, & Hinz, 2015, it is vital to understand the amount of money smokers are willing to quit smoking are eager to pay to formulate this initiative. Measuring the willingness to pay is crucial for the smokers in determining the cost they are willing to incur for the received services. Willingness to pay would make this initiative successful because it is the clients who decide on how much to pay. Consequently, smokers will prefer this initiative to other programs.

Opportunity cost is the intervention cost for the alternative costs forgone as a result of the adoption of new interventions (Weiss, & Kivetz, 2018). For this initiative to be successful, the health care system should decrease the cost of smoking cessation initiative and increase the cost of other already provided initiatives which are ineffective. For instance, by funding smoking cessation initiative over other programs, the opportunity cost of choosing the smoking cessation program will lead to increased benefits of this initiative.

Conclusion

Sound health is essential for a countries social and economic well-being. Public Initiatives such as smoking cessation program are critical in addressing the health needs of vulnerable groups in society. Affected people will adopt this initiate well if they are based on economic principles such as opportunity cost, willingness to pay, and marginal cost and benefits.

References

Battistoni, G., Genco, M., Marsilio, M., Pancotti, C., Rossi, S., &Vignetti, S. (2016). Cost-benefit analysis of applied research infrastructure. Evidence from health care. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 112, 79-91.

Coward, S., Heitman, S. J., Clement, F., Negron, M., Panaccione, R., Ghosh, S.,& Kaplan, G. G. (2015). Funding a smoking cessation program for Crohn's disease: an economic evaluation. The American journal of gastroenterology, 110(3), 368.

Getzen, T. E. (2016). A stairway to health finance built with books by Louis Gapenski. Journal of Health Care Finance, 43(2).

Kruger, J., O'Halloran, A., Rosenthal, A. C., Babb, S. D., & Fiore, M. C. (2016). Receipt of evidence-based brief cessation interventions by health professionals and use of cessation assisted treatments among current adult cigarette-only smokers: National Adult Tobacco Survey, 2009-2010. BMC Public Health, 16(1), 141.

Mankiw, N. G. (2016). Principles of economics. Cengage Learning.

Mishan, E. J. (2015). Elements of Cost-Benefit Analysis (Routledge Revivals). Routledge.

Newcomer, K. E., Hatry, H. P., & Wholey, J. S. (2015). Cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit analysis. Handbook of practical program evaluation, 636.

Schoenborn, C. A., &Gindi, R. M. (2015). Electronic cigarette use among adults: United States, 2014 (pp. 1-8). Hyattsville, MD: US Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics.

Scholz, M., Dorner, V., Franz, M., &Hinz, O. (2015). Measuring consumers' willingness to pay with utility-based recommendation systems. Decision Support Systems, 72, 60-71.

Weiss, L., & Kivetz, R. (2018). Opportunity Cost Overestimation. Journal of Marketing Research, 0022243718819474.