Promoting Smoking Cessation in the Community Via Quit to Win Contest 2012

Summary

Background According to the report of Census \& Statistics Department, there are still 659,300 daily smokers (11.1%) in Hong Kong and smoking kills over 7,000 people per year. The Quit and Win programme provided another opportunity to reach large group of smokers, and it aims to widespread quit attempts among smokers via incentives in order to boost up the number of quitters. Although such competitions appear to reach large cohorts of smokers, there is still insufficient evidence of its effectiveness in helping smokers to achieve complete cessation.

Aim This project aims to promote and evaluate community-based smoking cessation services through the Quit to Win Contest organised in the 18 districts of Hong Kong. The specific objectives of the study are (1) to build capacity in the community on smoking cessation through a training programme; (2) to empower the participated NGOs (a) to raise the awareness of smoking cessation in the community level; (b) to reach as many smokers as possible; (c) to arouse the interest of smokers to quit, through organizing the Quit to Win Contest; (3) to test the effectiveness of community-based on-site face-to-face counselling and Short Message Service (SMS) message vs. self-help booklet to assist current smokers to quit smoking; and (4) to build-up a community-based participatory research (CBPR) model in smoking cessation intervention at a district level in Hong Kong.

Methods A community-based participatory (CBP) approach, which is an effective way to engage public health researchers and community members (NGOs, other major stakeholders, and participants), will be used. Two domains of outcome will be assessed: (1) Effectiveness of smoking cessation interventions, (2) process evaluation of the recruitment activities including number of eligible participants and amount of publicity.

Procedure At the recruitment sites, after screening for eligibility of participants for the Quit to Win Contest, smoking counselor will measure eligible participant's level of carbon monoxide (CO) on expired air, and provide the self-help smoking cessation materials developed by the Hong Kong Council on Smoking and Health (COSH). Then the counselor will explain and invite the participants to join the cluster randomized controlled trial on smoking cessation intervention. Participants will be allocated to one of the groups of the smoking cessation intervention. 3- and 6-month follow-ups will be conducted

Hypothesis We hypothesize that the on-site brief smoking cessation advice will lead to significant increases in rates of smoking cessation in the intervention group than the control group (with the self-help materials only). Another hypothesis to be tested is that the intervention of sending SMS messages of smoking cessation advice is effective to increase the quit rate comparing to the control group.

Conditions

• Comparative Effectiveness Research
• Community-Based Participatory Research

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Counseling group

The content for the brief counseling group adopts a AWARD approach including asking the smoking habit, warning about the health risks associated with smoking, advising the smokers to quit, referring to specialized service, and repeating the above messages. A special designed health education card, based on the health education model, will be also provided to the participants. Additional telephone follow-up counseling (reminder) at 1-week \& 1-month will be made to the participants in this group.

BEHAVIORAL

SMS intervention group

The text messages are divided into two groups which target to smokers who are ready to quit and those who are not ready to quit. For smokers who are ready to quit, messages would be focused on practical advice and emotional support. For smokers who are not ready to quit, messages would be focused on motivating the smokers to have quit attempt.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• The University of Hong Kong

  lead OTHER

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2012-07-31

Primary Completion

2012-09-30

Completion

2012-09-30

Countries

• China