Nationally representative surveys of adults in England who had smoked in the past year were compared immediately before (n=803) and after (n=1,713) the Power to Quit campaign, with the Smoking Toolkit Study used to place results against longer-term trends. Quit attempts rose from 48.4% to 52.3% (aOR 1.16, 95% CI 0.97–1.38) and attempts using digital support from 16.0% to 18.4%, with associations larger among the 799 respondents who recognised campaign materials (quit attempts 64.9%, aOR 1.82). Quit success did not clearly change, and the rise in support uptake continued a trend already under way before the campaign.
Why it is interesting: A rare contemporaneous evaluation of a national cessation campaign at low smoking prevalence, and one that shows how hard it is to separate a campaign's contribution from the trend it sits in.