Mobile Mindfulness Based Smoking Cessation

DESCRIPTION provided by applicant Although significant progress has been made in reducing smoking prevalence in the US the CDC reports that an estimated million people or percent of all adults years of age or older smoke cigarettes CDC Cigarette smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in the US accounting for more than deaths or one of every five deaths each year CDC Although behavioral smoking cessation interventions appear to be equally as efficacious as pharmacologic interventions behavioral interventions have limited availability and are not as easily disseminated Innovative strategies are needed to make behavioral interventions more readily available and more easily disseminated In the last decade there has been increasing interest in mindfulness based therapies across a wide range of health conditions and chronic diseases Kabat Zinn Mindfulness based treatment approaches have been extended to smoking cessation and a number of studies have demonstrated very promising outcomes Smartphone technology offers new possibilities for the development of novel smoking cessation treatments delivered to smokers through a new interactive medium Acceptability of mobile health mHealth interventions is also very high and the prevalence of Smartphones has been rapidly increasing over the past few years across all socio economic demographics including lower SES populations Plaza et al Additionally mHealth interventions are able to deliver program content to users at their convenience and with greater privacy The development of a mobile mindfulness based smoking cessation program has the potential to overcome many of the limitations of group taught mindfulness based interventions including program variability instructor style and scheduling obstacles for study participants including the high time commitment to attend weekly sessions We propose to develop andquot Mobile Mindfulness Based Smoking Cessationandquot MMBSC a mindfulness based smoking cessation program delivered to smokers on their Smartphone devices Android iPhone This program will be based on the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction MBSR program Kabat Zinn tailored for smoking cessation PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE Our proposed product could be highly significant in its direct impact on cigarette smoking rates and subsequently on public health Moreover this delivery method has the potential for wide dissemination and high public health impact