Great American Smokeout
Also: GASO
American Cancer Society's annual quit-smoking day on the third Thursday of November, held nationally since 1977. It asks smokers to quit for one day, or start a quit plan, and relies on news coverage and local events.
- Years
- 1977–now
- Country
- United States
- Topic
- Tobacco
- Asks people to
- Stop
- Strategy
- Cessation service linkSimple instruction
- Channel
- EventsPrintSocial (organic)TV
- Audience
- AdultsAdult smokers.
Evidence
ObservationalPositive
Comparing Smokeout days with expected levels (Ayers 2016): cessation-related news rose 61%, Google searches 25% and quitline calls 42% on the day. That amounts to about 61,000 extra help-seeking events per year, about two-thirds of a typical New Year's Day effect.
Sponsor (who paid)
- American Cancer Society NGO, funder and creator
Credits (who made it)
Not recorded yet.
Related campaigns
- Tips From Former Smokers 2012–now
Sources
- Ayers JW et al. Leveraging Big Data to Improve Health Awareness Campaigns: A Novel Evaluation of the Great American Smokeout. JMIR Public Health Surveill 2016;2(1):e16 evaluation · 2016 · DOI 10.2196/publichealth.5304 · PMID 27227151
Research notes
Created 2026-10-22 by literature mining (PubMed/OpenAlex); evidence level, outcome and findings are paraphrased from the evaluation abstracts, full texts not read. No credits: no page naming an agency was checked. Evaluation measures online help-seeking and quitline calls, not quit success. Start year 1977 is the first national Smokeout (ACS history); confirm on cancer.org.
Record cases/acs-great-american-smokeout.json, updated 2026-10-22· Link to this campaign