Breathefree2.com is a free stop-smoking program and website developed by Loma Linda University School of Public Health. Assistant Professor Daniel Handysides, DrPH, presented the program at the 2nd Global Conference on Health & Lifestyle in Geneva, Switzerland, last month, to positive reception by groups including the World Health Organization.
The program is designed to be supportive, motivational, and relational rather than fear-based. “You’re very hard-pressed to find a smoker today who doesn’t already know that smoking causes cancer,” Handysides says.
At the same time, Breathe-Free 2 is evidenced-based on the latest research in medical and behavioral science.
There are two ways the free program can be completed—either individually online or as part of a guided, facilitator-led group. So far, more than 100 facilitators from around the globe have signed on, and some 20 countries are requesting further training. A Spanish-language version will be available soon.
As a couple, Daniel and Sandra Handysides—she a nurse practitioner, alumna of LLU School of Nursing, and current doctoral student in the School of Public Health— spent more than two years developing and testing Breathe-Free 2. This happened because of a request to LLU School of Public Health from the International Commission for the Prevention of Alcoholism and Drug Dependency, which had in turn received a request from the United Arab Emirates to help military and police personnel stop smoking.
The Handysides moved to Abu Dhabi in 2011, at first using the original Breathe-Free Program to Stop Smoking—completed in 1984 by the health ministries department of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists and refined at the church’s request from 1988–1991 by the LLU Center for Health Promotion—before realizing it needed additional updating. When they returned to Loma Linda in 2013, they continued to work on it.
Breathe-Free 2 is the result, and the program will remain adaptive to keep up with the latest scientific research. It is run by LLU School of Public Health and owned by the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists.
For more information about Breathe-Free 2, e-mail Daniel Handysides at dhandysides@llu.edu.
The first Breathe-Free program was, in turn, a revision of the Five-Day Plan to Stop Smoking created by LLU School of Medicine alumnus J. Wayne McFarland, MD, and Elman Folkenberg, a pastor, which they introduced in 1959.