Helping Youth Smokers Stop Smoking Through the Youth Quitline Programme

The University of Hong Kong (HKU)

Status: Unknown

Conditions: Smoking Cessation

Treatments: Behavioral: Brief counseling

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT02758028

YouthQuitline

Details and patient eligibility

About

The aims of the present study are:

1. To raise the awareness of smoking cessation service among youth smokers in Hong Kong;
2. To provide smoking cessation quitline service to youth smokers; and
3. To provide training to teenagers as peer smoking cessation counsellors.
4. To examine the effectiveness of adventure-based training and WhatsApp messages in helping youth smokers to quit

Full description

In Hong Kong, the demand of smoking cessation service of Youth was increasing in the past 10 years, the first youth-oriented smoking cessation hotline "Youth Quitline" was established in 2005. From August 2005 to July 2016, "Youth Quitline" has received over 9,267 telephone inquiries and provided telephone smoking cessation counselling for 1,952 youth smokers.

Youth smokers are recruited using the reactive and proactive strategies. The operation hours of Quitline service are weekdays from 17:00 to 21:00 and on weekends from 14:00 to 20:00. A questionnaire asking the smoking status, reason of smoking, dependency level, knowledge, attitude and practice of smoking or quitting at baseline, the perceived barriers of the smokers and the use of other tobacco products were designed to assess the status of participants, brief counselling with the use of motivational intervention approach is delivered during the phone call.

Telephone counseling at 1-week, 1-month, 3-month, 6-month, 9-month, 12-month and follow-up at 24-month are conducted with the participants to assess their smoking status (by questionnaire) and reinforce intervention (encourage quitting and providing quitting tips). Self-reported quitters who have quitted smoking for at least 7 days at 6-month are invited to perform saliva cotinine test (using NicAlert strip) plus exhaled carbon monoxide text to validate the smoking status.

A qualitative interview will be conducted to investigate the use of other tobacco products of the Youth Quitline participants, and aimed to find out their smoking patterns and feelings of using these products, and how these products might affect quitting or smoking, and how the protest activates influence the smoking behaviors among the youth smokers.

Enrollment: 300 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: Under 25 years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Hong Kong resident aged 25 or below
• Able to communicate in Chinese (Cantonese)
• Smoked in the past 30 days

Exclusion criteria

• Have difficulty to communicate via telephone
• Having queries irrelevant to tobacco control

Trial design

Primary purpose: Health Services Research

Allocation: N/A

Interventional model: Single Group Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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300 participants in 1 patient group

Brief counseling

Other group

Description:

Peer counselling is delivered based on the queries and the needs of individual clients, according to the smoking status, dependency level and the perceived barriers of each individual with the use of motivational intervention approach. Counsellors will emphasizes the identification, use, and modification of personally relevant coping strategies. Advice will be provided on overcoming expected difficulty, withdrawal symptoms and relapse prevention during quitting. The subjects will be followed up at 1-week, 1-, 3-, 6-, 9-, 12- and 24-month via telephone assessing their smoking status and reinforce intervention.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Brief counseling