Understanding the multitude of barriers that prevent smokers in lower socioeconomic groups from accessing smoking cessation support: A literature review

One explanation for the increasing smoking-related health inequalities is the limited access of lower socioeconomic status (SES) smokers to smoking cessation support. In order to understand this limited access – and to eventually improve accessibility – we provide a structured overview of the barriers that lower SES smokers face in the successive phases of access to cessation support. Our literature review included 43 papers on barriers of access to cessation support for lower SES smokers, published before June 2016. We used the access to health care framework to categorize the extracted barriers into (a) either the abilities of smokers or dimensions of cessation support and (b) one of the successive phases of access to support. We found that lower SES smokers encounter many barriers. They are present in all phases of access to cessation support, and different barriers may be important in each of these phases. We also found that each phase transition is hampered by barriers related to both the abilities of smokers and the dimensions of cessation support, and that these barriers tend to interact, both with each other and with the disadvantaged living conditions of lower SES smokers. In conclusion, reducing smoking-related health inequalities by improving lower SES smokers’ access to smoking cessation support requires a comprehensive approach. Our structured overview of barriers may serve as a starting point for tailoring such an approach to the multitude of barriers that prevent lower SES smokers from accessing cessation support, while simultaneously taking into account their disadvantaged living conditions.