Testing the Impact of Smartphone-based Messaging to Support Young Adult Smoking Cessation

Conditions

• Tobacco Cigarette Smoking

Eligibility Criteria

Sex

ALL

Age

18 Years - 30 Years

Healthy Volunteers

Not accepted

Interventions

• Smartphone-based intervention messages — BEHAVIORAL
  Intervention messages in the proposed trial will address specific high-risk situations for smoking and smoking urges. Messages will focus on two key situational triggers for message matching: 1. Stress (high/low) and 2. Presence of other smokers (yes/no). For each situation, characterized by a combination of these characteristics, several messages were developed. To improve user engagement with the intervention, all messages contain visual content in form of pictures.

Study Details

Clinical practice guidelines for smoking cessation emphasize cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to help patients develop coping strategies for urges. Mindfulness or Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) offer a different approach, which teaches smokers psychological flexibility through accepting negative experiences. While there is evidence for the efficacy of both CBT and Mindfulness/ACT smoking cessation interventions, it is unclear if these approaches are efficacious when implemented in real-time and with young adults. The overall goal of this proposal is to evaluate the efficacy of CBT and Mindfulness/ACT messages for young adults targeted at specific high-risk situations for smoking.

Key Dates

Start date

Oct 22, 2024

Status verified

Jun 2025

Primary completion

Jun 30, 2026

Completion

Jun 30, 2026

Study Design

Enrollment

160 participants (estimated)

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Intervention model

PARALLEL

Primary purpose

TREATMENT

Arms

• Experimental: Micro-randomized trial group
  The micro-randomized trial will determine if CBT and Mindfulness/ACT messages are superior to control messages in reducing the primary outcome momentary smoking urges. Based on participants' training data collected in the initial 14 days of EMA monitoring, intervention messages will be delivered during time-periods and at high-risk locations for smoking. In the intervention phase, participants will be prompted to complete 3 geofence-triggered EMAs per day for a total of 30 days. Each EMA will be followed by an intervention message and the type of message (CBT, Mindfulness/ACT, control) will be randomly selected at each time point (within-subject randomization).
• No Intervention: EMA-only control group
  A total of N=80 participants will be randomized into an EMA-only control group, parallel to the micro-randomized trial intervention group. This group will conduct 14-day EMA only training phase just like the micro-randomized trial group, but will not be switched over to the intervention phase after these initial 14 days. Instead, participants will continue the EMA-only data collection procedure for an additional 30-days (analogous to the 30-day intervention phase of the micro-randomized trial). During these 30 days, the EMA-only control group will continue to receive 3 randomly prompted EMA surveys per day and an additional 3 EMA surveys triggered by smoking reports.

Primary Outcome Measure

Change in smoking urge as assessed by a single item [ Time Frame: 15 minutes after message delivery ]

Central Contacts

• Johannes Thrul, PhD
  410-502-0925
  [email protected]

Locations (1)

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