Interactive Voice Response Technology to Mobilize Contingency Management for Smoking Cessation

UConn Health

Status and phase: Completed; Phase 2

Conditions: Cigarette Smoking

Treatments: Drug: transdermal nicotine; Behavioral: Telephone counseling; Behavioral: contingency management for smoking abstinence

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other; NIH

Identifiers

NCT01484717

R21DA029215 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)

11-132-2

Details and patient eligibility

About

Cigarette smoking remains the most common source of preventable morbidity and mortality in the United States, with in excess of $167 billion in economic costs per year. Contingency management (CM), in which tangible incentives are provided contingent on a target behavior like abstinence, is highly efficacious in improving substance abuse treatment outcomes and is receiving increased attention for smoking cessation. Expired carbon monoxide (CO) is the most common objective smoking status test used in smoking research and treatment. Unfortunately, multiple CO tests/day are typically required to detect all smoking and reinforce sustained abstinence. The resulting logistical and resource limitations greatly limit the application of this potentially powerful quit smoking toolset. This study addresses these limitations by examining the effectiveness of using interactive voice response technology (IVR) to implement CM. Smokers who want to quit (N = 90 randomized) will receive 2 quit preparation sessions based on public health guidelines for smoking cessation and set a target quit date. Participants will be randomly assigned to 1 of 2 treatment conditions: (a) IVR-S consisting of objective smoking status monitoring using IVR, telephone counseling and transdermal nicotine and (b) IVR-CM, consisting of the same monitoring, telephone counseling and transdermal nicotine plus IVR-based CM for smoking abstinence. It is hypothesized that abstinence rates will be higher in the IVR-CM condition compared to the IVR-S, supporting a combined IVR CM approach, and thereby greatly increasing the applicability of these powerful smoking cessation tools.

Enrollment: 90 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• regular cigarette smoker
• age ≥ 18
• mailing address & valid photo I.D.
• want transdermal nicotine

Exclusion criteria

• not English speaking
• in recovery for pathological gambling
• contraindication for transdermal nicotine
• female who is pregnant, nursing a child, or not using effective contraception

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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90 participants in 2 patient groups

Standard Care

Active Comparator group

Description:

Telephone counseling plus nicotine patch

Treatment:

Behavioral: Telephone counseling

Drug: transdermal nicotine

Contingency management for abstinence from cigarettes

Experimental group

Description:

Telephone counseling and nicotine patch plus contingency management

Treatment:

Behavioral: Telephone counseling

Drug: transdermal nicotine

Behavioral: contingency management for smoking abstinence