Latinos Kick Buts: Mobile Engagement and Cessation Support for Latino Smokers Phase II

PROJECT SUMMARY Despite a growing need for smoking cessation services, Latino smokers face notable disparities in cessation treatment. Consequently, there is a big opportunity, both from a scientific and a business perspective, to develop and test the most optimal culturally tailored approaches to enroll and engage Latino Smokers into cessation programs. The Kick Buts program owned by Agile Health has shown to be a highly effective mobile text message- based smoking cessation program in clinical trials and is now available to more than 1.8 million employees and patients. However, Latino smokers’ engagement rates in the program are very low. In the STTR Phase I, we developed and tested a culturally-relevant version of the Kick Buts program in English and Spanish to better engage, increase quit attempts and improve cessation outcomes among Latino smokers, Latinos Kick Buts (LKB). The next step to assure the commercialization of the LKB will be to improve the reach, enrollment and retention in the LKB. In this Phase II our goal is to compare the impact of 4 theory-based text message types (reward, scarcity, fear/self-efficacy and social norms) on enrollment of Latino smokers into LKB. We will deploy these messages among Latino smokers served by Hackensack Meridian Health, one of the largest healthcare systems in the U.S., to increase the enrollment and retention of Latino smokers in the Latinos Kick Buts program. Latino smokers (N = 2,600) will be randomized to receive up to five messages/week (once a day at different times of the day and different days of the week) from one of the four message types. Smokers responding to these messages will be automatically enrolled in the LKB program and begin to receive “quit decision support” messages designed to guide smokers to develop a personalized quit plan. Two weeks later, smokers who do not respond to the first type of messages will be re-randomized to receive one of the top two performing message types arising from the first cycle of messaging. Non-responders to the second cycle will be re-randomized again to receive another cycle of the top two performing messages. After all three cycles are complete, we expect that at least 629 Latino smokers will enroll in LKB. We will carefully track engagement, retention, and satisfaction with LKB. Aim 1. To compare the impact of 4 theory-based text message types on enrollment of Latino smokers into LKB. Aim 2: To identify days of the week and times of the day most likely to lead to enrollment as well as understand enrollment into different messages by age, gender, socioeconomic status, and country of birth. Aim 3: To assess engagement and satisfaction with LKB in a clinic population and generate estimates of cessation among diverse group of Latinos.PROJECT NARRATIVE Latino smokers (N = 2,600) will be randomized to receive up to five messages/week from one of the four message types (reward, scarcity, fear/self-efficacy and social norms). Smokers responding to these messages will be automatically enrolled in the Latinos Kick Buts program and begin to receive “quit decision support” messages designed to guide smokers to develop a personalized quit plan. Smokers who do not respond to the first type of messages will be re-randomized to receive one of the top two performing message types arising from the first cycle of messaging. Non-responders to the second cycle will be re-randomized again to receive another cycle of the top two performing messages. After all three cycles are complete, we expect that at least 629 Latino smokers will enroll in LKB.