Smartphone Application Smoking Cessation Study

University of Virginia

Status: Completed

Conditions: Tobacco Use

Treatments: Behavioral: quitSTART

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other; NIH

Identifiers

NCT04623736

3643

Details and patient eligibility

About

The purpose of the study is to determine if using the smartphone application quitSTART can help people quit smoking and to understand how use of specific smartphone application features when trying to quit smoking is associated with success.

Full description

Cigarette smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in the U.S. and causes multiple cancers. Approximately 34 million U.S. adults currently smoke cigarettes, but over half of all smokers attempt to quit smoking each year. However, only about 6% quit successfully, in part, because many smokers make unassisted quit attempts, due to the lack of accessibility of cessation programs. Mobile health (mHealth) smoking cessation programs delivered through smartphone applications ('apps') can potentially reach a large number of smokers in the U.S., as 81% of U.S. adult smokers own a smartphone. The National Cancer Institute hosts Smokefree.gov, a suite of free, publicly available smoking cessation resources. In addition to web based and text-messaging resources, Smokefree.gov launched the quitSTART smartphone app in 2013, which is a publicly available smoking cessation app.

Participants in this study will be asked to complete a pre-cessation assessment, then download, install, and try to quit smoking using the smoking cessation smartphone application, quitSTART. Participants will be asked to use quitSTART for 4 weeks. Participants will also be asked to complete online surveys 2 and 4 weeks after the start of the study. To understand how people are using quitSTART, the investigators will collect quitSTART usage data from all participants (for example, how often someone opens quitSTART during the study period and what specific features someone uses).

Enrollment: 152 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Cigarette smoker
• Smoked at least 100 cigarettes
• Able to read and speak English
• Owns a smartphone
• 18 years of age or older
• USA resident

Exclusion criteria

• Not a cigarette smoker
• has not smoked at least 100 cigarettes
• Not able to read and speak English
• Does not own a smartphone
• Under 18 years of age
• Not a US resident
• Currently pregnant

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: N/A

Interventional model: Single Group Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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152 participants in 1 patient group

quitSTART

Experimental group

Treatment:

Behavioral: quitSTART