Accepted for/Published in: JMIR mHealth and uHealth
Date Submitted: Dec 18, 2019
Date Accepted: Jul 7, 2020
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
A social network-based smoking cessation intervention for Chinese male smokers: pilot randomised controlled trial
ABSTRACT
Background:
Around 2 million Chinese people die annually from tobacco-related diseases, mostly men; yet fewer than 8% of Chinese smokers ever receive any smoking cessation advice or support.
Objective:
This study aimed to test the preliminary effectiveness and feasibility for a social network platform (WeChat)-based smoking cessation intervention in Chinese men.
Methods:
We recruited 80 Chinese male smokers aged 25-44 years from WeChat, China's most widely used social media platform. We excluded individuals using other smoking cessation interventions or who lacked capacity to provide online informed consent. Eligible participants were randomly assigned (1:1) to intervention or control groups. Neither participants nor researchers were masked to assignment. The intervention group received access to a Chinese-language smoking cessation mini-programme developed from theoretical models of behaviour change and a rapid iterative development process with potential end-users done entirely via WeChat, plus guideline-based information about the harms of smoking. Controls received information on how to contact the Chinese Quitline and cessation clinics. Both groups received incentive credit payments for participating. The primary outcome was 30-day biochemically verified smoking abstinence at 6-weeks after randomisation, with missing data treated as not quitting. Secondary outcomes were other smoking status measures, reduction of cigarette consumption, study feasibility (recruitment and retention rate), and acceptability of and satisfaction with the programme.
Results:
Eighty participants were recruited from within China over 13 days (18/01/2019 – 31/01/2019). At 6 weeks, 36/40 (90%) intervention and 35/40 (87.5%) control participants provided complete self-reported data on their daily smoking status via WeChat. Biochemically verified smoking abstinence at 6 weeks was 10/40 (25%) in the intervention group and 2/40 (5%) in the control group (RR=5, 95% CI 1.2 to 21.4, p=0.025). Participants rated the satisfaction with the intervention programme as 4.56 out of 5.00.
Conclusions:
Our programme is a novel, widely accessible, and acceptable smoking cessation intervention for Chinese men. A future trial with greater sample size and longer follow-up (6 months) will identify if it is as effective as these preliminary data suggest. Clinical Trial: This trial was registered with the ChiCTR registry (ChiCTR1800020434) and ANZCTR registry (12618001089224) and is complete.
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