Dr. J. Wayne McFarland, a Seventh-day Adventist health advocate who co-authored the Five Day Plan to Stop Smoking, which drew millions to seminars in the 1960s, died March 14 at a retirement facility in Loma Linda, California. He was 97.

McFarland and co-author Elman J. Folkenberg released the smoking cessation program at a time when smoking was prescribed for breathing problems.

The duo offered their first smoking cessation seminar in Taunton, Massachusetts in 1960, later releasing the 1962 book Five Day Plan to Stop Smoking for pastors and health experts to offer the program in communities across the United States.

McFarland, a physician, and Folkenberg, a pastor, would encourage seminar participants to repeat the phrase in unison and throughout the day, "I choose not to smoke," Time magazine reported in 1963.

The Time article also noted the seminar included a strong spiritual component, similar to support methods of Alcoholics Anonymous. Participants were also given specific dietary instructions to accompany the plan and matched with a buddy to monitor each other's progress.

"The five-day plan was enormously successful, it met a real felt need," said Dr. Allan Handysides, Health Ministries director for the Adventist Church.

J. Wayne McFarland was born in Brawley, California on August 11, 1913 and graduated from Madison College, in Nashville, Tennessee. He earned a medical degree from Loma Linda University in 1939 before serving a fellowship in physical medicine and rehabilitation at the Mayo Clinic, in Rochester, Minnesota.

He practiced and taught in Philadelphia, first at Temple University Hospital and later at Jefferson University Hospital. He worked for the Adventist Church's headquarters in the 1940s and 50s, editing Life and Health magazine, and helped to establish what is now Adventist-Laymen's Services and Industries, a lay supporting organization of the denomination.

Later, while serving as an associate director for the Adventist Church Health Ministries department from 1970 to 1980, McFarland would team up with Adventist evangelists to offer a practical health message to accompany a series' spiritual outreach, something he did in six continents over his career.

After retirement he continued traveling the world, offering smoking cessation support in Russia and serving as a special consultant on health education to the Shenyang Municipality of China.

McFarland received numerous awards from municipalities and universities, including a medallion of merit from the World Health Organization in 1988.

McFarland's seminar partner Folkenberg died in 1986. His nephew, Robert Folkenberg would later serve as the denomination's president, from 1990 to 1999.

McFarland's wife Dolly preceded him in death in 2008. He is survived by two daughters, three grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.

--additional reporting by Don A. Roth