Smoking Cessation: Financial Incentives

Glostrup University Hospital, Copenhagen

Status: Completed

Conditions: Smoking Cessation

Treatments: Behavioral: Campaigns; Behavioral: Financial incentives

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT03849092

119404

Details and patient eligibility

About

The aim of this intervention is to test if the investigator, by offering a financial incentive to smokers who abstinence from smoking, can:

1. recruit more smokers with low socioeconomic status to municipal smoking cessation programs
2. achieve higher abstinence rates at municipal smoking cessation programs among citizens with low economic status - Rather than by use of campaigns (=usual strategy) informing citizens about their options for support at municipal smoking cessation programs?

Full description

For decades the prevalence of smokers has been declining. However, during the last four years the prevalence is stagnated. All municipalities are offering support to/ and during smoking cessation. Nevertheless, a lot of the municipalities find it very difficult to recruit smokers to their programs - in particular smokers with low socioeconomic status.

Hypothesis: It is assumed that more smokers with low socioeconomic status, which are otherwise very difficult to reach with smoking cessation offerings, will attend in municipal smoking cessation programs if they are offered a financial incentive. It is also assumed that smokers with low socioeconomic status, who have difficulty quitting smoking, will achieve higher smoking cessation rates if they are offered a financial incentive of abstinence from smoking. The target group of this study is therefore smokers with low socioeconomic status (SES).

The study involves 6 intervention municipalities (3 financial incentives municipalities and 3 campaign municipalities), and 6 control municipalities. The investigator conducts matched randomization at municipality level, and matches the municipalities on number of smokers recruited to smoking cessation programs in the previous year (2017).

All 6 intervention municipalities receive 102.000 DKK (16536,43 UDS) which must be used on their intervention. Beside the intervention everything goes on as usual in each municipality. Each municipality is its own control and the change will be analyzed after the intervention. The prevalence of smokers in each municipality is registered as usual by means of the Health Profiles, however not in this study!, which aim not is to measure the number of citizens quitting smoking unaided, but solely aim to focus on the municipals smoking cessation activities.

1. Intervention in the 3 financial incentives municipalities: the municipalities will make simple invitations and advertisements, showing that smokers can achieve a financial incentive of 1200 DKK if they abstinence from smoking.

   The period of a smoking cessation program is 7 weeks, and participants will receive a financial incentive as a gift voucher the 4 last meeting days, if validated abstinent from smoking.

2. Intervention in the 3 campaign municipalities: each municipality decides how the campaigns/advertisement should look/be like. The campaign should try to target smokers with low SES, recommending getting support during smoking cessation.

3. Control municipalities: 6 "clean" control municipalities perform their smoking cessation activities as usual and do not receive any financial resources. They do not know that they are control group in a trial.

The investigators measure validated recruitment- and abstinence rates 6 and 12 months after last session.

Enrollment: 1,934 patients

Sex: All

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

Inclusion Criteria:smoker. -

Exclusion Criteria: non smoker, vaping of e-cigarettes (only)

Trial design

Primary purpose: Prevention

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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1,934 participants in 3 patient groups

Financial incentive

Experimental group

Description:

3 municipalities will receive 120.000 DKK for financial incentives.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Financial incentives

Campaigns

Experimental group

Description:

3 municipalities will receive 120.000 DKK for campaigns.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Campaigns

Control

No Intervention group

Description:

6 "clean" control municipalities perform their smoking cessation activities as usual. They wont receive any financial resources. These muncipalities have not been randomly selected but have been matched (by number of smokers attending the smoking cessation groups in the municipality in 2017, the year before the intervention). 3 of them are Campaing Control group and 3 are Finacial Incentives Control group.