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Over the next days — in recognition of the good intentions we all bring into the new year — we'll focus on various New Year's resolutions and ways to address them.

We recently noted an important benefit of introducing smoking recession programs as part of a well-run workplace wellness program: Workplace efforts may carry over to the home.

The study is titled “Impact of Comprehensive Smoking Bans on the Health of Infants and Children” and is published in The National Bureau of Economic Research.

The post states: “We do not find any evidence that adults are shifting their smoking behaviors to inside the home where children may be present,” the researchers wrote. “If anything, we find significant evidence of a decrease in the likelihood that smoking occurs inside the home among households with children, consistent with an overall reduction in the additive stock and an overall reduction in smoking behavior.”

There's also significant business benefit. The Center for Medicine and Public Health at Florida State University noted that over time, tobacco cessation benefits generate financial returns for employers in:”

• Reduced health care costs
• Reduced absenteeism
• Increased on-the-job productivity
• Reduced life insurance costs

There are even Immediate benefits for employers, including:

• Increases in employee productivity
• Reductions in smoking-attributed neonatal health care costs
• Employers who provide a smoke-free workplace may also realize savings on fire insurance and costs related to ventilation services and property repair and upkeep

Now, for resolution keepers — especially ones who might have received a very cool holiday gift — a study notes there soon may be another way that might help people quit smoking: VR.

The study is titled “The Use of Virtual Reality in the Production of Cue-Specific Craving for Cigarettes: A Meta-Analysis.”

It states: “The cue-reactivity procedure has demonstrated that smokers respond with increases in subjective craving in the presence of smoking-related cues. Virtual reality is an emerging mode of cue presentation for cue-reactivity research. Despite the successful implementation of virtual reality during the last decade, no systematic review has investigated the magnitude of effects across studies.”

The conclusion provides room for more research in the ways that VR may be used in the future: “The meta-analysis suggested that presentations of smoking cues through virtual reality can produce strong increases in craving among cigarette smokers. This strong cue-reactivity effect, which was comparable in magnitude to the craving effect sizes found with more conventional modes of cue presentation, supports the use of virtual reality for the generation of robust cue-specific craving in cue-reactivity research.”