Quitsure is a personalised smoking cessation app-based program which uses proven behavioural science and psychological tools, with the aim of changing how smokers think and feel about smoking. The program also comes with the second-largest Quit Smoking community on Facebook (Quit Smoking Smartly), which boasts over 25k users.
A quit-vaping app
Meanwhile Fred Hutch public health researcher Dr. Jonathan Bricker, will be adapting and testing an existing adult quit-smoking app to help kids under 18 quit vaping. Supplementary support from the Hutch’s Reservoir Fund, will develop and test, the first-ever mobile smartphone app to help teens stop vaping nicotine, via a randomized controlled trial. The study will be funded by a two-year grant from the NorthShore University HealthSystem Research Institute at the University of Chicago.
Bricker plans to adapt a digital therapeutics app he designed to help adults quit smoking cigarettes, Quit2Heal, into an age-appropriate app to help younger people stop vaping. He plans to conduct a randomized controlled trial next year, with the aim of comparing his newly designed program with the National Cancer Institute’s program, SmokeFreeTeen.
“There are currently no proven programs to help youth stop vaping,” says Bricker. “Despite all we’ve heard about how much teens vape, there’s no trial out there testing apps. Vaping is easy to hide and it’s become more prevalent among teenagers, including groups of kids who were historically less likely to smoke cigarettes like athletes and academically oriented kids.”
