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Twitter, CDC ads effective at helping smokers quit
A Twitter account that shared daily automated messages and encouraged group communication, was twice as likely to help smokers quit than nicotine patches and government websites alone, according to data published in Tobacco Control.
“In the USA, 73% of online adults report using social network sites, such as Facebook or Twitter, with 42% using multiple sites, often daily,” Cornelia Pechmann, PhD, of the Paul Merage School of Business at the University of California, Irvine, and colleagues wrote. “Social network sites’ potential for facilitating self-help is still unrealized, though. … We developed a novel intervention for smoking cessation called Tweet2Quit that seeks to address these limitations.”
Tweet2Quit sends twice-daily automated communications encouraging frequent check-ins among small, closed groups of followers acting as a peer support group. To assess the benefit of the Twitter account, the researchers conducted a two-group randomized controlled trial, that included 160 participants aged 18 to 59 years.
All participants received 56 days of nicotine patches and emails with links to smokefree.gov, with instructions to set a quit date within 1 week. The 80 participants who were randomly placed in the Tweet2Quit cohort were also enrolled in 20-person, 100-day peer groups on Twitter, receiving daily discussion topics via the Tweet 2Quit account, and daily engagement through texts. At the end of the study, 65 participants in the Tweet2Quit group, and 70 in the control, were used for the primary analysis.
According to the researchers, participants in the Tweet2Quit group doubled the 60-day sustained smoking abstinence rate of those in the control, with a rate of 40% compared with 20% (OR = 2.67, CI 1.19-5.99, P = .017). Twitter use via phone predicted greater tweet volume, and tweet volume predicted sustained smoking abstinence (P < .001). In addition, responses to daily autocommunications accounted for 24% of tweets within the groups.
“Our results have implications for the utilization of social networks for clinical interventions,” Pechmann and colleagues wrote. “Key features here were the formation of private self-help groups, using an intimate group size of about 20 people, setting fixed start and end dates, using a limited-duration intervention and sending out autocommunications including daily discussion topics to the group and daily feedback to each individual on their prior 24-hour engagement.”
In addition, CDC researchers reported in an article published in Preventing Chronic Disease that 1.83 million smokers had attempted to quit, and 1.73 million more intended to quit within the next 6 months, due to the second phase of a 2014 ad campaign aired by the CDC, featuring former smokers and graphic depictions of their cigarette-related health issues.
Following up on the 12-week 2012 campaign, the 2014 advertising effort, called Tips from Former Smokers, was split into two phases, from Feb. 3 to April 6, and from July 7 to Sept. 7. The first phase primarily repeated advertisements from the 2012 and 2013 campaigns. However, phase 2 featured new advertisements that included graphic portrayals of former smokers’ health issues, including cancer, gum disease, premature birth and stroke.
Of the 4,248 cigarette smokers who participated in the baseline survey and were contacted for the follow-up immediately at the end of phase 2 of the campaign, 80% reported seeing at least one of the advertisements.
“Despite the significant investment required to implement campaigns of this scale, our results suggest that these campaigns continue to have significant impact, even after multiyear implementations,” Linda J. Neff, PhD, of the office of smoking and health at the CDC’s National Centers for Chronic Disease Prevention, and colleagues wrote. “The ongoing health and economic burden posed by cigarette smoking indicated a role for expansion of evidence-based initiatives.” – by Jason Laday
Disclosure: Researcher Judith J. Prochaska, PhD, MPH, reports serving as an expert witness in litigation against tobacco companies, and has consulted for Pfizer, which makes smoking cessation medications. No other authors reported any relevant financial disclosures.