Mobile app for positive psychology intervention to enhance smoking cessation outcomes

Cigarette smoking is the leading cause of mortality in the U S resulting in over deaths every year and costing more than $ billion in loss of productivity Smoking is also the leading cause of cancer and of deaths from cancer Smoking causes cancers of the lung larynx mouth bladder liver kidney colon rectum and others While smoking rates in the U S have declined over recent years to decreases in smoking rates have been relatively slow since and the problem of relapse remains a major obstacle to reducing smoking prevalence Only about of those attempting to quit on their own and to of those involved in intensive cessation treatments remain abstinent as long as one year Thus the development of innovative and efficacious behavioral and pharmacological approaches to smoking cessation treatment remains a significant public health priority Tobacco quitlines are the major vehicle through which smoking cessation services are delivered in the U S and are available in every U S state via a national quitline portal QUIT NOW Quitline counseling for smokers initiating calls to quitlines has impressive odds ratios of to in the latest Cochrane meta analysis however the actual quit rates from the meta analysis ranged only from to or when NRT was offered Calls for new methods of improving tobacco quitline outcomes are clearly warranted Within the field of behavioral psychology positive psychology has been a burgeoning area of research that may provide valuable and innovative directions for improving on behavioral smoking cessation treatments Our investigative team recently developed and tested a smoking cessation treatment that incorporates training in positive psychology intervention strategies which resulted in significantly higher odds of smoking abstinence across weeks of follow up compared to standard behavioral treatment These promising findings suggest that providing tobacco quitline users with training and practice in the use of positive psychology skills during the course of their quitline engagement may increase smoking cessation outcomes relative to standard quitline use Tobacco quitlines would derive significant benefit from such an adjunctive psychosocial approach for their clients While issues of feasibility limit the use of this approach in a standard delivery method its use in the form of a mobile application app holds significant promise The aims of this Phase I application are to employ user centered design processes to develop and test the acceptability and efficacy of a mobile health app pQuit which will incorporate intervention strategies from the field of positive psychology vs a relaxation app Breathe Relax in a small randomized controlled trial of adult smokers All participants will receive tobacco quitline counseling The expected outcome of this project is the development of a prototype of pQuit which can readied for Phase II testing of clinical efficacy in a future randomized controlled trial in conjunction with tobacco quitline counseling PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE While rates of cigarette smoking in the U S have declined over recent years decreases in smoking rates have been relatively slow since and the problem of relapse remains a major obstacle to reducing smoking prevalence Thus the development of new innovative and efficacious approaches to smoking cessation treatment remains a significant public health priority The proposed study will develop and test the feasibility acceptability and preliminary efficacy of a mobile phone application designed for adult smokers to be used in conjunction with tobacco quitline counseling The mobile application named pQuit Positively Quit is derived from an empirically supported treatment for smoking cessation that incorporates novel positive psychology intervention strategies and it is expected that its use will improve smoking cessation outcomes relative to standard tobacco quitline counseling