Replicating the Hospital Elder Life Program in a community hospital and demonstrating effectiveness using quality improvement methodology.

Objectives: To evaluate a replication of the Hospital Elder Life Program (HELP), a quality-improvement model, in a community hospital without a research infrastructure, using administrative data.

Design: A pretest/posttest quality-improvement study.

Setting: A 500-bed community teaching hospital in western Pennsylvania.

Smoking cessation in a homeless population: there is a will, but is there a way?

This cross-sectional study sought to determine the prevalence of smoking, readiness to quit, and preferences for smoking cessation treatments among a sample of 236 homeless adults attending 9 sites serving homeless persons (mean age 41.8 years; 73% male). Two thirds (69%) were current smokers, of whom 37% reported readiness to quit smoking within the next 6 months.