Family History of Cancer and Smoking Cessation, Is There a Role for Physicians?

Aim: This study aims to investigate the relationships among family history of cancer, physician’s advice on quitting, and motivation to quit among smokers in the United State. Method: This study using data collected by the 2010 National Health Interview Survey. Five separate sets of multivariate logistic regression models were used to investigate the three-direction relationships among: 1) effect of family cancer history on medical doctors’ advice on quitting, 2) effect of family cancer history on motivation to quit smoking, 3) effect of doctor’s advice on smokers’ motivation to quit. Results: Smoking cessation advice given by physicians has a significant effect on both smoker’s motivation and action taken to quit smoking, but a large proportion of the smokers with family cancer history did not receive doctor’s advice on quitting. Conclusion: Family history of lung cancer or other cancer types was not found to be associated with increased motivation to quit smoking. This is at least partly due to poor collection of family cancer history by physicians. This may be ameliorated by promoting the use of a recently developed self-administered tool for the collection of patient data on family cancer history in primary care settings.