Spanish language smoking cessation study is poorly designed

I work at an FQHC where the majority of my patients are Spanish speaking. I care a lot about producing high quality research for the community I serve.

Respectfully, I was surprised to see this study published in Annals of Family Medicine. In this study, the two groups under question (English versus Spanish speaking smokers) are compromised of different people and also receive separate interventions (cessation counseling in English versus Spanish, which as described varied in terms of numbers of calls, and engagement in the program). Therefore, the study is not designed to answer its primary research question, as to whether Spanish speakers have a different response than English speakers to ask-advise-connect cessation counseling.

With the data at hand, it would have been more appropriate to structure this as a descriptive study of Spanish speaking patients and their engagement with cessation counseling in Spanish. If you include English speaking patients in your analysis, you are comparing apples to oranges, both in your treatment/control groups and in your interventions, rendering the conclusions meaningless.